


Sweeter than Heaven, hotter than Hell

by queerly_it_is



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Angels, Angst and Humor, Demon!Jensen, Demons, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fallen Angels, Heaven and Hell, Humor, M/M, Minor Character Death, Oral Sex, Supernatural Elements, angel!Jared
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-29
Updated: 2012-11-29
Packaged: 2017-11-19 21:00:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/577596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerly_it_is/pseuds/queerly_it_is
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For thousands of years, Jared and Jensen have been on Earth, respectively influencing mankind on behalf of Heaven and Hell. When Jared disappears, and Jensen's superiors attempt to draft him for the final battle that will bring on Armageddon, they both have to decide where their loyalties lie; to their cause or to each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweeter than Heaven, hotter than Hell

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SPN Reversebang 2012. Art by mashimero - http://mashimero.livejournal.com/194705.html - Betad by itsathinline.
> 
> Some elements borrowed from Good Omens, Sandman, and Constantine.

It’s been about thirty years since Jared last saw Jensen.  
  
That’s not really a big deal. They’ve gone decades, even centuries between meeting up before. Thousands of years worth of knowing each other can sometimes mean that you need longer absences, if only so you’ve got something interesting to say when you do end up in the same place and time.  
  
If those absences have gotten gradually shorter and less frequent in the last millennium or two, usually with more drinking and overly loud laugher than discussing the Balance, then that’s not something Jared’s looking at too closely.  
  
On any given day (and he’s been given a lot of them), Jared can’t put a name to his and Jensen’s non-relationship. There’ve been plenty of times when they couldn’t stand the sight of each other, when they’d felt every bit the implacable foes they’re meant to be. But after six thousand years you start thinking of the one consistent presence in the world as, if not a friend, then at least some kind of fond acquaintance.  
  
They were friends, or at least not enemies, before Jensen’s Fall, and they’ve never really bought into the idea that they _should_ be bitter enemies just because one of them declared that Heaven is “all pomp and no romp” (something Jared hadn’t understood until he’d seen what humans were getting up to after Eden, and it still took time for him to realise that it wasn’t a passing craze and they were just going to keep doing it), and that if he couldn’t have fun there, he’d find someplace where he could.  
  
Turns out there’re some wicked parties in Hell. In every sense of the word, Jared’s willing to bet. Or would be, if gambling weren’t considered a sin. Still, he doubts Jensen had realised then that no matter how great the party is, you still have to show up at the office on Monday morning and get on with the job, hangover be (appropriately) damned.  
  
Jared had never known an angel to Fall so… beguilingly. Which says a lot about Jensen, given that Lucifer had handed Jared his drink three seconds after the patterning of Creation, told him he “might as well finish it, kid” and then gave a jaunty two-fingered salute as he dropped from the Spheres to spend the next ten billion years as the Lord of Hell, Great Adversary, Prince of Darkness and leader of the war against Heaven, without even mussing his hair.  
  
In his private thoughts, Jared suspects that those of them destined to Fall - or at least slip down, in the most contrived game of Chutes and Ladders ever - and join the opposition were given a little extra… well, let’s call it snark, in their ethereal makeup.  
  
Not that he’d know. Demons aren’t exactly his crowd. They tend to look at angels the way you might look at the five year old brother of the guy passing the bong around at the party, who’s just stumbled in sleepily wearing his footie pajamas to see what all the noise is about.  
  
Hell has never really interested Jared as a place. He knows what it’s like Below - it’s still ultimately God’s domain after all - and he’s long over being pissed about the whole rigged Rebellion thing, even if God’s method of appointing regional managers could use some serious revising.  
  
But after Lucifer handed the keys over to Duma and Remiel, and decided that running a piano bar in LA with the Lilim was a much better use of his immortality, Jared figured it was probably best to stay away.  
  
Remiel had always been the type to go for that sort of thing. He’d plucked the wings off a Cherub once, as part of some stupid game of escalating dares with Mammon, and then spent the next thousand eternities working in the Post Office as punishment. Some of the Holy Host still felt that had been too harsh.  
  
Jared’s never met Duma, probably wouldn’t recognise him in a crowd, but he could’ve been part of the Upstairs furniture given how notoriously pious he was; never one to question or say no to anything.  
  
But then piety doesn’t always do a lot of good in the long run either, Jared knows.  
  
There’s nothing that special about Hell anyway, at least not from an angel’s viewpoint. It’s whatever the souls sent there think it should be; you expect fire and brimstone, and voila, you’re smoldering while some two-bit demon is jabbing you with a rusty steak knife. You want meat hooks and your skin peeled off over and over by chattering fiends of ash and bone, and that’s what you get. Humans punish themselves in ways demons - or angels - could ever hope to think of.  
  
Heaven - or at least, the conceptualised Heaven that humans go to - is much the same; defined by your own desire and expectation. Hell is just… a less pleasant version; the opposite side of the chessboard, and one that Jared’s got no real desire to examine up close.  
  
It has nothing to do with Jensen working there, doing whatever he does to earn his keep from century to century; tempting mortals and making deals, offering up multitudinous pathways to damnation. It really doesn’t. Hell just has too much politicking, no matter if it comes from the angels that govern it or the demons that operate it.  
  
Politics, Jared’s always thought, is what happens when you combine two halves of the same coin that like to believe they’re different currencies.  
  
Really, Eternity from either end of the spectrum just gets boring if you hang around long enough, which is why Jared’s been on Earth for so long in the first place. He can have a job and talk to people and carry out the will of Heaven in countless ways just fine without getting caught up in all the ritual the Host likes to indulge in.  
  
Then again, he hasn’t spent much time around angels recently either. His social Venn diagram is more just him in the middle of a single circle, slightly overlapping with Mrs Caswell, who lives across the hall, frequently gets lost in her own stories and insists on calling him ‘Jim’ even though that’s not a name he’s ever had. It’s not ideal, but she’s got good intentions and she’s bound for Heaven so who is Jared to judge?  
  
He trudges - as much as any angel is capable of trudging - into his apartment, slips out of his shoes and heads for the nearest soft-looking bit of furniture. In this case it’s the squishy lump of fabric and padding desperately trying to pass for an armchair, shoved into a corner and surrounded by at least five piles of books that shouldn’t be standing according to the rules of any reasonable kind of physics.  
  
Luckily physics isn’t something Jared has to worry about unless he really wants to.  
  
He collapses down into it, legs stretched out in front of him, resisting the urge to manifest a footstool just so he doesn’t end up using one of the stacks of books and newspapers again. He needs to change; he can feel all the places where his clothes are dusted with what could be flour and could be powdered sugar, patches of skin itching and sticky with icing or glaze or some other thing he’d failed to avoid.  
  
He enjoys his job most days, it gives him a pleasant way to interact with people and steer the general flow of events to a more positive outcome (thwarting the occasional evil deed is a surprisingly common feat when working in retail), but he’s come to accept that he’s never going to enjoy the more messy aspects of the bakery. There must be something about angels that makes them fussy about being clean. Or Jensen’s right and Jared’s just obsessive all on his own, but since Jared isn’t technically _supposed_ to agree with Jensen about anything, he’s ignoring the idea.  
  
Running _A Slice of Heaven_ suits him, as far as human professions go. He doesn’t sleep or get tired from ordinary physical work, so the early starts and long hours aren’t a problem, and there’s something satisfying about creating things that are designed to make people happy (the smell of fresh pastry drifting down the street has been known to dissuade even the worst tempered stockbroker and, on one memorable occasion, stalled a mugger in the line flowing out the door long enough for the cops to overtake him).  
  
Plus he gets to wear a lot of white, which is still a comforting familiarity even now.  
  
He leans back into the chair, breathing in the comforting smells of his overstuffed and slightly dusty apartment. There’s a stack of pans in the sink from yesterday’s experiments with a new kind of zest, the tap dripping slowly onto a metal tray. He could have them cleaner than new and neatly packed into a cupboard with a hand wave, but he knows he’d only spend hours feeling guilty for ‘cheating’. It’s a good thing he doesn’t really need to eat, since he thinks every dish he owns is currently piled and crowded ‘round the small sink like eager shoppers grasping for a bargain.  
  
Looking to the small table on his side of the kitchen counter, he smiles at Gil, the goldfish he’s had for the last hundred and twenty-eight years. Jensen had won him at a World’s Fair, for no reason other than to stop someone else from winning him, and Jared’s held onto him ever since out of a kind of moral duty. But now that he’s gotten attached, and all the magic he’s used to keep the little guy going for so long, Jared can’t say he regrets it. Though he has thought about getting Gil a companion to share his bowl and small plastic castle with.  
  
The last few rays of sunlight sneak above and between the slanted blinds, casting alternating bands of orange-yellow and deeper shade over everything, warm traces over Jared’s hands where they’re resting on the arms of the chair.  
  
He’s probably needed somewhere, no doubt the opposition is busy meddling in human existence. There’ll be all those tiny acts that lead to bigger changes that humans are so ready to accept as luck or to write off as coincidence.  
  
As he turns his head to look at the sun dropping behind the taller buildings and below the distant horizon, Jared cleans himself up from hair to clothes to fingertips, and wonders where Jensen is.  
  
* * *  
  
Jensen takes his place behind the mic, straddling the padded stool on the raised area of the floor, and flicks his eyes around the room almost leisurely. Almost.  
  
The crowd, if you wanna call it that, is obscured slightly by the low lighting and film of smoke - and not all of it as legal as good old tobacco, which is a definite sign in his favour - but really, the room’s got nothing on any random location in Hell, and his eyes have long since learned to make do.  
  
He widens the bowed V of his legs like it’s incidental, and if he’d been an incubus he’d be insufferably proud of himself for the tangible spike he feels from half a dozen of the patrons. Having so many choices when it comes to your outward form has become a kind of art in itself. Among some of them at least.  
  
The guitar - one of his favourites, handmade by someone who sold his soul long before Jensen met him, and feeling more like an article of clothing after decades of use than any clothes he currently owns - sits across his denim-clad thigh as he leans in, the cigarette clinging to the corner of his lips rolling with the slight smirk he’s wearing.  
  
It’s changed over the centuries, but very few things will make people open to those dark whispers in the backs of their heads the same way music will. The right emphasis, with the right audience, can inspire or provoke or arouse, sometimes all of the above at once.  
  
One of the best things about humans, if you ask Jensen, has always been the miles they’ll take if you provide them the barest semblance of an inch.  
  
Jensen’s always had a way with the right notes and the right words, spun together like twine. It’s occasionally gotten him noticed more than he should’ve allowed, and Jared still won’t let him burn those stupid paintings. Say whatever you want about ‘artistic merit’, Jensen hates the name Pan like few other things on this plane. And if he ever finds out who dreamt up the goat thing, well, Hell has a lot of vacant spots full of ambitious demons who know better than to ask questions.  
  
Smoke trailing from the corner of his mouth, his fingers pluck the strings, and his voice licks out into the room like a serpent’s tongue, working into all the dark spaces. Words that sound like promises, indictments, and the ideas that haunt dreams and leave you wanting. Wanting things you can’t name and would be afraid of if you could.  
  
Conversations get abandoned and drinks forgotten, eyes swinging between Jensen’s fingers as they coax sound from the guitar and his mouth as he doles out the song like a barter they don’t know they’ve entered into. The lyrics are never the same twice, and he doesn’t exactly take requests. In fact until he shows up, the clubs and bars and wherever else don’t even know they’ve booked him. But a quick check always shows his name, right where it’s supposed to be, in just the right handwriting and colour of ink to be reassuring. Humans rely way too much on things so easily altered.  
  
The crowd is his, he can feel it. Suggestion flowing easily across the ether, and looking up through the dark fan of his lashes he just knows - the same way he knows where ley lines are, or how to See beneath the skin of things that walk the Earth but never touch it - which of them will spend their night drinking or fucking or stealing, as soon as they remember where they are and that yes that sounds like a good idea, doesn’t that sound like a good idea?  
  
It’s easily done with people, because there’re so many options. Young people, old people, proud people, stupid people. Greedy people, desperate people. People who care too much and people who just think they do. Countless permutations that all amount to the same thing. He’s not standing at a Crossroads and he doesn’t need them to sign a contract in blood. Just give ‘em a nudge, and let them damn themselves.  
  
Free will makes such a durable noose.  
  
The song trails off, and with it the tendrils of power he’s woven out, dipping through the air and fading as they disperse, the final pluck of the strings humming longer than should be possible, if you had the presence of mind in that moment to notice.  
  
Jensen slips to his feet in a sinus wave of easy grace, and even though there is no applause - there will be, but it’ll be sporadic and absent-minded, and followed immediately by the startling realisation that the stage has been empty for at least five minutes - he takes a slow, sarcastic bow and a final sucking drag of the cigarette before he drops it, and pulls the cool leather of his jacket across himself.  
  
Stepping down, he snags an untouched whiskey sitting on the closest table, toasts the vacant stare of the guy sitting at it, and knocks it back on a rolling swallow.  
  
“You’ve been a wonderful audience,” he drawls, setting the glass down and letting looseness fall over his shoulders, rocking on his heels and smiling to himself, tipping an imaginary hat. “Enjoy the rest of your evening.”  
  
He strolls between the tables to the back, smiles again as he pauses to pat the teetering doorman on the shoulder, and slips out into the shadowy night, whistling faintly and enjoying the feeling of a dishonest day’s work well done. Being a demon might not’ve been his first choice for a job, but it still beat trying to make a career of Nothing At All.  
  
He’s keeping an easy pace down the sidewalk, trying to make up his mind between one of those hot dogs that’ve never had any contact with a recognisable food product, and ducking into another bar to stir up some extra sin and getting a jump on his quota. He’s humming to himself, and there’s a smattering of stars gleaming down on him between the orange blush of the streetlights like baubles strung across a black canvas.  
  
He’s adjusting the guitar case slung over his shoulder, tugging at his jacket as he walks, and that’s when he suddenly notices the change in the darkness surrounding him: shadows that aren’t really made of shadow; that subtle difference between empty space and space that just looks empty. There’s a hint of sulphur like the most awful perfume. It’s getting warmer.  
  
There’s a stomach-dropping and unpleasant rush, like jumping from a height or stepping onto flat ground where you thought there was another stair, and then a silhouetted figure strolls out of a side street with a deceptively light tap of footfalls. It’s weirdly formless even with a humanoid shape, casting long and jagged shadows in eight directions like the wings of a great bat, and others like curved, pointed horns that stretch up the brick wall behind it.  
  
“Jensen,” the not-quite-there figure says, in an accented and grating voice that makes Jensen’s teeth itch.  
  
It’s an effort, but Jensen keeps on walking, stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He’d like to think he wasn’t being paranoid, but then a demon lacking in paranoia just means you were too naive to see them coming for you.  
  
The inky, transcorporeal thing moves along with him, scrolling along but not really touching the ground, still echoing footfalls that are completely out of pace and rhythm like sharp clicks. Every streetlight it passes under gutters and dies like a torch in a gale. The stars above the streetlights hide themselves in gloom like frightened children under their beds.  
  
Jensen just keeps walking, knowing he’s not getting off that easy, but still betting that navigating this plane is more taxing for this one that it is for him.  
  
“I help you with something?” he mutters, not bothering to raise his voice since he doubts there are ears to hear him, trying to sound vaguely respectful but still not cowing or meek. Talking to any of the more… entrenched denizens of the Pit is a careful balance between forcing them to deal with you on your terms, and convincing them you aren’t stepping out of place.  
  
‘Course, they might be inclined to discorporate you regardless, just for the entertainment value, but at least then you can get yourself assigned a new body from Human Resources with the knowledge that you put the effort in. Hell is never kind, but it’s much less kind to those who don’t learn to work the system to their own selfish advantage. It’d almost be Darwinian, if Darwin wasn’t up in Heaven somewhere, hopefully making studies of the chirping Cherubim like overgrown finches with no beaks.  
  
“We’ve got a task for you, Jensen,” it says, the ‘s’ sounds pulled long and hissed, the consonants clipped and like stone scraping over stone, dry and harsh. It’s also got what Jensen thinks is a London accent.  
  
“Sorry, I’m all booked up for the next millennium or two,” Jensen says, hating where this is going already. Anything that can journey topside and not stuff its true shape into a more human one has to be older than dirt and high on the food chain, and much less likely to be bartered with.  
  
He entertains the thought of manifesting himself somewhere far away, another continent in another hemisphere, somewhere with a lot of souls to blot him out. But chances are he’s already tethered down by the same Power that this one’s using to bend reality around himself. Plus the last time he’d tried ducking the infernal overlords, he’d been relegated to taking minutes at Dark Council meetings as punishment.  
  
There’s a whoosh like standing by the tracks as a train passes, and then the thing’s in front of him, looming tall and broad and disconcertingly amused. Two more streetlights go out, one of them exploding and raining glass with a tinkling like wind chimes. He’s showing off.  
  
“You aren’t getting a choice here, Jensen,” he tells him. “You don’t obey, then you can be… persuaded.” The last part’s said with a distinct relish that makes Jensen think this one _wants_ him to say no, just for the pleasure of making him say yes after a bit of bloodshed and agony.  
  
Time to change tactics then.  
  
He drops his hands by his sides, bows his head just enough to be deferent, and smiles with teeth like rows of daggers.  
  
“And whom am I being addressed by?” he asks, like he wants the right name to say with the perfect simpering inflection, like a good little minion who’ll paint his master’s Name in the blood of the damned.  
  
There’s a chuckle that spools through the air and digs under the beds of Jensen’s fingernails, a careless flick of Power like entitlement. “Agares,” the thing says. “Grand Duke of Torment and Commander of Legions. Teacher of the Profane and Bringer of Destruction.”  
  
Well shit, he thinks. Grand Dukes of Hell don’t cross over just to deliver the mail and hand out assignments. He can almost feel his chances of weaselling out of whatever this is dwindling to less than an ice cube’s chance in… well.  
  
“I uh…” He swallows, mentally running through questions that won’t result in the ground opening up and devouring him. “How can I serve?” he asks in the most hoity toity form of Hellspeak he knows, feels it slip from his tongue like oil and a thousand curses.  
  
With any luck (if you’re definition of luck is as warped and pessimistic as a demon’s) someone Upstairs has noticed that Agares has left Hell. The angels might not come down to the game board for anything Jensen and his ilk do, but middle management like a Grand Duke of Torment is a whole different set of problems.  
  
Or, if not the Choirs of Heaven themselves (which is probably for the best, given how pro-smiting some of them can be), then at least one particular halo-toting ‘baker’ who owes Jensen at least a few favours. And a nice lunch. Jared’s supposed to be preventing this sort of stuff from ever happening, last Jensen checked. Too much time making bread and not enough time maintaining their little balancing act, the slacker.  
  
“You’ve been _chosen_ ,” Agares says, sounding not entirely thrilled. Lower demons being promoted is never good for any of the ones already above them. The firing process in Hell is pretty literal. It’s also very pointy. “The ultimate war is coming. The End of Days will soon be here, and you’re to report to the First Legion to fight with us. You can bring any weapons and take on any form you wish. Refreshments will be provided. No tennis shoes.”  
  
Even though he can’t see it - and wouldn’t want to anyway, given the perverse and distorted horror it’s likely to be - Jensen is pretty sure the Duke’s smirking.  
  
Jensen swallows, and hates that his palms are sweating too much to blame on the way the air is drying up and getting warmer. Every human for miles is going to have persistent nightmares for weeks and not know why, and good luck trying to stay in a good mood on this street ever again. The road rage is sure to be epic at the very least.  
  
Assuming there’s anywhere left of this plane, and any people to sleep _or_ drive on it, of course.  
  
“Sounds great,” he says, trying for upbeat and not even managing the occult equivalent of it. “When…” He swipes a hand over his face, sweat pricking his upper lip. “When’s the big day?”  
  
“Thursday,” Agares says, around a grin that even mostly inexpressible without a recognisable mouth, is still unnerving. “Heaven’s got a bit of a soft spot for Thursdays, and we couldn’t miss the chance to really ruin it for them. Now, I will have your answer to this summons, Jensen, demon of Hell.”  
  
Thursday. Two days. Two days until the world comes to an end.  
  
“Okay, sure,” Jensen makes himself say, because he’s fresh out of choices, and in the tone of someone who really needs to be going. The tone invented for awkward encounters in supermarket aisles, with that one friend you wouldn’t wish harm on, but would really prefer if their existence became completely detached from yours forever. “I guess I’ll uh… go soak an axe in virgin’s blood. Sharpen my knives on the bones of nuns. Defrost the freezer, that sort of thing. I’ll see you on the field of battle at the appointed time.”  
  
“Excellent.” The shadows roiling around everywhere pause abruptly, such a glaring absence of movement that Jensen’s almost convinced Time’s been suspended, and he’s trapped in his shape like a conscious statue. Then with a quaking and clanging groan like compressing a school bus sideways into a toaster, Agares dissolves into the ambient nothingness, taking the hints of brimstone and the balmy temperature with him.  
  
The streetlights click and buzz back to luminous life, save for the shattered one that fritzes almost apologetically. Jensen waves a hand and the new bulb gleams orange in its restored casing. Minor acts of disobedience, he tells himself. The stars reappear, and a dog howls in the next street over.  
  
Jensen lets out a slightly shaky sigh as he pulls out his cell phone, a sleek black device that runs on something you could almost call electricity, and houses one of the most interesting lists of contacts you’re likely to see, for the ten or so seconds you’d get before it melted your eyes in their sockets. And forget about the voicemail. You don’t wanna know about the voicemail.  
  
He presses two on the speed dial (one being a direct line to a goblet of tainted blood sitting on a demon’s dining room table), and waits.  
  
The connection rings and rings, and Jensen almost takes to exploding streelights himself as he taps his foot and grumbles under his breath about absent-minded Celestials who may as well not even _have_ a phone.  
  
There’s a tap, and Jensen almost speaks, before an automated recording jumps in and makes his heart sink to somewhere near his feet. Good thing he doesn’t really need it. The sound’s a little muffled, which Jensen takes as a sign that Jared still hasn’t gotten over his distrust of wireless technology (no matter how many times Jensen’s told him that humans came up with that one all by themselves), and was either holding the phone at arms length like something poisonous that might bite him, or he’s using the oldest form of telephonic device he could find that doesn’t involve tin cans and a length of string.  
  
“Hello, uh, this is Jared and I’m… I’m away? Oh right, I’m not home! That’s it. So leave a message, and I’ll call you back when I am. Home, that is. Uh. Bye.”  
  
There’s a painfully prolonged shrill _beep_ that Jensen uses to swear creatively into the mouthpiece, hoping it’s actually the machine beeping and not Jared thinking that’s what you’re supposed to do. Jensen still cringes when he remembers that army of trumpet players. Jared’s good at lots of things, but giving music lessons should never, ever be considered one of them.  
  
“Jared, it’s me,” he says as soon the machine picks up, trying not to rush the words. “I don’t know if you’ve heard from your side yet, but we’ve got a major issue of the apocalypse variety. We’ve got days, Jared, just days, and we need to… to do something. I don’t know.” He takes a breath, tips his head back toward the sky and tries to think. “But we can’t let them tear this place down, and it won’t take ‘em long to realise we’re not exactly playing by the rulebook. Whatever you’re doing, leave it and get outta dodge okay? No miracles or impeding sin where you might get noticed. And _call me_ the moment you get this.”  
  
He ends the call with a vindictive stab of his thumb on the reddest button (they’re all red), and turns on a heel back toward where he’d left his car.  
  
Bitter unmerciful Satan how he hates a ticking clock.  
  
* * *  
  
It’s two o’clock in the morning, and Jared’s puttering around his kitchen in drawstring pants and an old sweater, making hot chocolate on the stove. It’s an indulgence, but he’s spent decades perfecting the recipe, and it’s one of the most popular items at the bakery so he feels justified, if not Righteous.  
  
Jensen might’ve had a point when he said Jared took up his human line of work for all the taste testing he gets to do.  
  
The record player on the counter’s playing music that technically falls under Below’s jurisdiction, since they got everyone except Elgar and Liszt, but there are _some_ lines that Jared will cross in the name of relaxation. He’d been out from ten until midnight ministering to the sick at a nearby children’s hospital, so he thinks he’s mostly covered on listening to Rachmaninoff now he’s home.  
  
He’s stirring gently and adding the occasional touch of nutmeg or cinnamon, trying to get the balance just right. He’d only managed what he’d consider to be the ‘perfect’ hot chocolate once, about sixty years ago, and he’d been so excited he never paused to write down exactly what he’d done. The pitfall of confections is always the way they warp Time, until you can’t fathom how the box is so suddenly empty or where the mountain of wrappers came from.  
  
Angelic memory may be broader and have greater depth than human memory, but holding onto every single fact over the stretch of thousands of years is still too much to ask for. Though if he’d had a choice, Jared would’ve gladly lost his entire memory of the Spanish Inquisition in favour of his more spur-of-the-moment recipes. Nobody needed to remember that much detail about the Spanish Inquisition. It won’t help you expect it any better.  
  
Gil’s swimming happily around his bowl, which at the moment has four cookbooks propped open on top of it, since Jared ran out of counter space a half hour ago, and some flecks of inventively concocted and miracled-up fish food floating in it. His kitchen may be a useful culinary laboratory, but it’s not exactly overrunning with excess work surfaces. He might consider moving, if he wasn’t such a ‘homebird’ (Jensen’s term, applied after that place in London had basically burned down with Jared still inside it. It’d taken him weeks to get all the ash out of his hair, but he’d saved his books and most of his record collection). Plus it would hardly be fair to Gil at this point; Jared can’t even move the bowl without his aquatic friend sulking in his castle for days.  
  
The apartment’s being lit partially by the antique lamp on the table in the rough centre of the room, and partly by another kind of light, that to the outside observer would seem like a kind of sunlight glow ringing Jared’s head and flowing faintly from his skin as he works, almost a golden afterimage.  
  
Finally satisfied that he’s got the drink to as close to perfect as it’s going to be this time, and jotting down a couple of changes for the batch he’s going to make when he heads to the bakery later, Jared pours the aromatic mix into a large, slightly chipped mug and carries it to his favourite armchair, flicking an unnaturally large ball of lint off the seat with a stray thought. There’s been the occasional moment when Jared’s thought the dust bunnies in his apartment had somehow acquired sentience. He might’ve checked once or twice. The results were inconclusive.  
  
He’s got a few hours before he has to be anywhere, and there’s a manuscript of Keats’ he’s wanted to look at since he found it at a dealer’s last week. It would’ve cost him a pretty big sum if the owner hadn’t owed Jared for averting a robbery once. It’d been a pair of misguided teenagers thinking they could make off with some of the more occultist material. It wouldn’t have done them any good, since Jared routinely checks bookshops all over for anything with more than a scrap of Power that could become an issue.  
  
Humans manage to get into enough trouble as it is without magic being involved, and Heaven’s policy on witchcraft, while not as… harsh, as some religions decided to go with, is still based around an ounce of prevention being worth the pound of flesh. And the increased soul traffic when it inevitably gets screwed up or polluted with man-made prejudice. Then there’s what the other side might do with some of the things scattered around the globe.  
  
There’s a reason the bedroom of Jared’s apartment is entirely full of shelves sitting behind a deceptively strong door, and sealed with enough wards to keep out not only the supernatural, but anyone with even the slightest hint of mal intentions. The building could crumble into rubble, and Jared’s allocated room of dangerous objects would still be left standing. Which might take some explaining, he admits, but it’s still better than the alternative, which would probably resemble handing an entire armoury over to a group of chaotically-minded and especially bored children. As if there’s not enough of that going on already.  
  
He’s most of the way through his first mug of sweet, rich chocolate, and so engrossed in the manuscript that he doesn’t notice at first when the room starts to get brighter. Since he’s gifted with extremely good vision anyway, he reads another five whole pages before the added illumination drags his attention away from the yellowing paper with its fine, ink-blotted text, and the fascinating notes scribbled in its margins.  
  
Standing and placing his mug down next to Gil’s bowl, he heads to the middle of the room, where a bluish glow is slowly edging out the warm lamplight like a tide encroaching on the beach.  
  
Jared frowns as he switches off the lamp, and follows the light to the reasonably empty patch of carpeting between the bedroom door and the living/dining room. There’s a pulsing circle of white light standing out against the worn-flat carpet, like a safety jacket caught in the path of a car’s high beams. Around the inside of the circle, fine, delicate symbols are forming from nothingness, getting bolder and brighter along with the circle as the bluish hue fills the apartment.  
  
Titling his head at an uncomfortable angle, Jared realises the symbols are distressingly, painfully familiar.  
  
“Oh. Well shit,” he says, unthinkingly, when with a low, buzzing resonance that reminds Jared of the time he’d spent with Faraday, the room abruptly floods with a much more pervading and immaterial glow, like being steeped in warm water, floating weightless even though he can feel the carpet beneath his sock-clad feet and under his toe where it’s sticking through a hole he hasn’t gotten ‘round to darning yet.  
  
The light is pure white, giving off a disarming feeling of contentment like a patch of sunlight streaming through a windowpane. It seems to fill the room and focus on him at the same time; radiance and a spotlight both.  
  
And then comes the Voice, full of Power and a kind of careless, self-assured importance.  
  
Jared tries to keep down the belaboured sigh. He’s only vaguely successful.  
  
“Jared,” the great Voice says, with a subtle hesitation, and an undertone like that’s not the name going though its mind. That it’s actually thinking of a very different, much older and longer name, that Jared still cringes when he thinks of. The kind of name that once could’ve burned the air and curled flame against the blade of a sword, a sword Jared ‘misplaced’ for a very good reason.  
  
“Uh, speaking?” he acknowledges with a wince, hoping the source of the Voice can’t see him, but feeling deep down that it probably knows what he’d had for breakfast every Sunday in 1460, and the title of every album he’s bought since the Renaissance. The Metatron’s always been the nosey type.  
  
“It has been some time,” the Voice intones, as though the Voice of God and Messenger of the Host has ever cared about Time or bothered with idle pleasantries. Or any pleasantries at all. “The War is upon us, Jared.” Again that hesitation, like his old Name is mocking him. Jared’s heart clenches, his stomach twisting up. “The reckoning of Creation; the Final Judgement as mandated by the Lord. You are being… recalled.”  
  
“ _Recalled?_ ” he bursts out before he can help it, and the light brightens almost unbearably for an instant that lasts forever, a physical pressure behind his ribs, choking off his words. Capricious asshat.  
  
In the background, he thinks he can hear his phone ringing.  
  
“Are you refusing an order?” There’s a rumble in the question, like an ever increasing slide of rocks down a mountain, and Jared’s the poor bastard standing at the bottom peering up and pondering about whatever that approaching dust cloud might be.  
  
“No, no of course not,” he’s quick to assure, sucking in a breath when the band around him eases its grip. “I just--I didn’t know I was on a specific mission, so I-”  
  
“You serve the cause as part of the Host of Heaven. You will obey,” Metatron tells him, with less uncertainty than any disembodied form of speech should be capable of. Then again, almost bored now, indolent: “You _are_ being recalled. You’d better pack light. _Very_ light.”  
  
Jared looks around his apartment, feels his brain do a pointless skitter-jump over everything in sight, as though he’s just won a vacation in a giveaway and his cab’s waiting downstairs to take him to the airport. Clothes? No, it’ll just be sanctified armour and smiting weapons. Toothbrush? Physical form reduced to the wrathful fire of the Lord, raining judgement from on High, ergo no corporeal teeth.  
  
Jensen’s old argument about not holding onto things is starting to make a depressing amount of sense.  
  
Jensen.  
  
“What about my uh… my counterpart?” he asks, squinting at the guessed source of the beam of Holy Light above his head.  
  
“Not our concern,” Metatron says, with a shrug so audible Jared has no trouble picturing it. “The Pit can deal with their representative however they like. The Fallen don’t deserve our consideration.”  
  
Not once in all his years on Earth has Jared surrendered to the temptation of telling someone to proverbially shove it. He’s thinking of changing that policy right now. It’d probably be worth the demotion, and maybe even the discorporation; they’re clearly snatching him anyway, so the time it’d take for them to materialise him a new body could help.  
  
That’s _definitely_ his phone ringing.  
  
“I can understand that,” he says, trying his best to be diplomatic. “But shouldn’t there be a meeting? These things have to be mutually agreed upon, right? Wouldn’t want the ranks of the Host showing up and the Legions of Darkness not knowing about it. Think how awkward that could be.”  
  
“They are aware of the situation,” the Voice of God says, and Jared’s thoughts are a dizzying mess of useless ideas as he tries to think of something - _anything -_ that could delay his reporting to Heaven long enough to contact Jensen. Jared knows they could work out some kind of arrangement between them, but that kind of manipulation is much more Jensen’s skillset than Jared’s. He can’t do this on his own, that’s why they’re both on Earth to begin with.  
  
“Your time is up, Jared,” Metatron booms like he’s reading off a scroll. Jared wouldn’t be surprised if he was.  
  
“I-I suppose I’m ready,” he says, reluctantly. Or means to say, since the moment he goes to form the words there’s a sharp tugging sensation that starts somewhere above his shoulders, and an awful _rush_ as the light carries him through the membrane of the world in a violent squeeze that makes Jared think he finally understands that ‘camel through the eye of a needle’ business. His ears pop, his sense of up and down become meaningless, and he feels himself become detached from the cloying grip of space-time, surrendering himself to another, more arcane, sort of ‘physics’.  
  
Then everything is shapeless, profoundly _un_ physical, and all that’s left behind is an empty apartment even more strewn with books and random objects than it was before, one very confused, perturbed goldfish, and a blinking light on the circa 1998 answering machine.  
  
* * *  
  
Jensen pulls up outside his building with a screech of rubber on the unsuspecting pavement, the Cadillac’s rear end fishtailing slightly with a rolling lurch.  
  
He pats a still-damp palm on the dashboard, murmuring an apology. Jensen’s typical distaste for speed limits and road safety aside, he’s usually at least careful with his own car.  
  
On the passenger’s seat, his phone’s display remains stubbornly blank, free from calls or messages. He’d tried Jared twice more on the way over, leaving increasingly imaginative curses on the angel’s machine between dire warnings and what he suspects was some really poorly disguised concern. Nothing. He’d even risked calling a few of his more sympathetic contacts in the occult circles (also known as the ones who owe him the most, or the ones who’ve screwed him over recently enough to still fear his ever-creative reprisal). But they’re either more in the dark on whatever Hell’s planning than he is, or they’ve been told to keep their mouths sewn shut for fear of… well, having their mouths _actually_ sewn shut, he supposes.  
  
Leaving the car unlocked and door half open, safe in the knowledge that anyone who tries stealing it will get a seriously nasty surprise, he climbs the stairs to his loft two or three at a time, sometimes shedding the laws of gravity altogether and reappearing on a different floor, agitated enough for the full demonic horns and tail to be visible. Soon he’s striding purposefully down the narrow corridor that reminds of an underground Mayan passageway - one of the really good ones that were designed to flood and stop people escaping alive - until he’s standing in front of the wide metal sliding door with its intricate locks that recede as he approaches, sigils flaring and vanishing as the protections let him pass.  
  
Jensen’s lived in a lot of cities, in a lot of countries, and every time he ends up somewhere new he always takes the time to find a place he really likes. His infernal duties take him all over the world, but he’s come to appreciate the human vice of creating somewhere you’re glad to come back to. And if nothing else, it’s a good security bunker.  
  
The loft’s tastefully decorated, partly because Jensen’s never agreed with Jared’s sentimental little compulsion to collect all kinds of random human things, and partly because he’d felt obligated after Hell went to all the trouble of inventing interior design in the first place. Of course the humans had to go and one up them with home makeover television shows, but that’s the order of things in The Creator’s universe.  
  
Hell gave up ever trying to be as fiendish as humanity around the time the first caveman clubbed his neighbour over the head for no reason other than he had a temper, and then proceeded to rob him. Jensen remembers standing with a group of demons, milling around watching the whole thing and looking puzzled and vaguely disturbed, until they’d just shuffled back to Hell with consoling talk of going fire-skating to take their minds off things.  
  
The floor is hardwood, and there’re modern and incomprehensibly designed chairs tucked beneath sparse, gleaming marble worktops. The kind of chairs that _look_ pretty, but will leave you with bruises in unlikely places if you were dumb enough to try sitting on them for more than a fraction of a second. There’s a widescreen plasma television mounted on the wall that gets every cable and satellite channel on Earth, plus a few extras, and speakers that could blow out a pane of glass from a mile away. Jensen’s never used any of them, but that’s the principle of modern living as he’s given to understand it; have more, use less, and be as smug about it as you can.  
  
True to that idea, the loft has three staircases, two of which go nowhere, and an unnecessary amount of abstract art that Jensen has barely ever looked at, because surely that was the artist’s intent.  
  
A single, shiny red apple sits in the middle of his otherwise empty fruit bowl.  
  
He doesn’t have a computer, even though he’s been responsible for some of the more diabolical aspects of recent computing technology, including but not limited to Internet Explorer, keys that take up space on keyboards but either do nothing, or should never be pressed under any circumstances, the Blue Screen of Death (originally the Red Screen of Death, until someone in Hell’s PR department pointed out that humans would probably be extra infuriated by a more neutral colour), terms and conditions that might _look_ like English, but are in fact a very well disguised form of Hellspeak that will damn you in perpetuity if you read them fully (Jared came up with making sure nobody ever, ever did, and Jensen still mocks him for encouraging people to lie), and tumblr. Jensen is still waiting for Downstairs to fully appreciate the Infernal value of tumblr.  
  
They’re probably still pissed that the angels got away with Apple so easily, when it’d taken Hell’s best ‘people’ years of sweat and blood (not their own, thankfully) to get Microsoft on their side. Or they’re still horrified by the apps. Only humans could’ve come up with apps.  
  
Passing the well-stocked (and equally underutilised) kitchen, with its sophisticated chrome appliances (so complicated they designed the people who built them, in a kind of postmodern causality paradox), Jensen glances at the large, irregularly-shaped and multifaceted clock on the wall. It’s one of the few things in his loft that he cares about, with its various, ornate hands showing the time wherever Jensen is, and the Infernal Time in every Circle of the Pit; which is usually either six seconds and six minutes past six (a joke that Jensen thinks has really gotten old now, especially since Lucifer’s retired from the place), or exactly twelve in the AM, since none of the demons Below know how to set the corresponding clock in their particular Circle.  
  
Thank the Devil they’d never got VCRs Downstairs. Another example of where humanity’s ingenious cruelty had surpassed Hell’s own.  
  
Right now though, all the hands say the same thing. Every one of them’s pointing towards the cursive, slightly glowing letters that read ‘ _ALMOST UP’_ , having already slipped past _‘RUNNING OUT’_ , _‘TIME TO PANIC’_ and _‘SELL YOUR STOCKS IN MICROSOFT_ ’.  
  
He mutters a sour-tasting, stinging blessing under his breath when he sees how close the hands are to sliding onto _‘GAME OVER, INSERT COIN’_ , and heads for the bedroom to get what he rushed here for.  
  
The bedroom, in Jensen’s opinion, is the pinnacle of his living arrangement, in that he’s got no need for a bedroom at all, which makes it the most decadently wasteful room in the whole loft. His bed is a large, artfully carved wooden one, with a mattress so comfortable that angels would forsake every cloud in Heaven for it.  
  
Currently, it’s being taken up by Jensen’s cat, Cat.  
  
It’s maybe not the most imaginative name, but since Cat had been waiting regally outside the door the day Jensen took the keys from his hoodwinked landlord (who’s conveniently forgotten to ask Jensen for rent even once in the last six years) and has, on more than one occasion given Jensen looks that would have Hellhounds whimpering and hiding behind Cerberus’ legs, Jensen assumes he doesn’t mind. Or she. Jensen’s never really worked up the courage to check. He’s guessing Downstairs sent him (or her) for some reason, given the fact that she (or he) comes and goes without a cat flap or so much as an open window. He’s also never seen the sleek white animal eat or drink anything. There’s probably an extra law of thermodynamics that describes Cat’s existence.  
  
He doesn’t even know how they came to be sharing the loft. Cat’s just always been there, and that’s the way it is. Jensen tries to take his (or her) continued presence as Hell’s tacit approval. A little nod to his good work, since cats had been his idea in the first place. Probably some Dark Council member’s idea of a joke.  
  
Jensen’s probably prouder of cats than anything else he’s contrived on Earth. Any creature that can reduce humans into simpering, cooing balls of embarrassing and unintelligible language, while at the same time being completely apathetic and sometimes outright hateful of the existence of every living thing, are well worth the award Jensen had gotten for them back in Egypt.  
  
Modern humans can claim ownership and domestication all they like, but you’ll never see a cat feeding _them._  
  
She (or he) gives Jensen a disdainful look as he crosses the room to a large painting of a certain lady, which would today be considered the original, if poor Leonardo hadn’t gotten into trouble with the woman’s husband over it. He takes it down, revealing the gunmetal grey safe he’d had built into the wall.  
  
The tumblers spin smoothly as he inputs the combination - the date of Beelzebub’s deathday, since he forgot just once about four thousand years ago and is _still_ apologising for it, which never would’ve happened if it wasn’t a number with so many zeros - and tugs the heavy, sigil-embossed and magic-reinforced door open.  
  
“Okay,” he says, giving Cat a quick glance as his (or her) glossy tail swishes in carefully meditated rage at having her (or his) nap disturbed. “You’d better clear out,” he says, not knowing if Cat can understand him, but suspecting there’s more behind those frosty blue eyes than average feline intelligence. “Doubt you’ll wanna be around for whatever happens next.”  
  
There’s a low, unbroken grumble that seems to emanate from everywhere at once, filling the space and all the space beyond, before Cat stretches and leaps from the bed with grace that moves beyond animal and slides squarely into preternatural. Jensen gets one last long look, before he (or she) trots out of the room with an elegant swipe of tail, like a shark moving in open water.  
  
He doesn’t bother going to let the animal out. It’d either be pointless or considered condescending.  
  
Turning back to the contents of the safe, Jensen takes a slow, steadying breath, and does his best not to flinch as he reaches in.  
  
This part is never enjoyable.  
  
* * *  
  
Jared’s never had a headache, but as he drags his leaden body upright from its prone position, he thinks he finally understands the concept. He’s not a fan.  
  
He drags a hand across his face, pressing at his eyes to try and clear the blur, which is when he notices he’s wearing different clothes. Not the pale, fuzzy sweater and low-slung pants he’d been wearing, but the minimalist crisp-white garb of an angel’s uniform, minus the grace armour designed to layer over it like a carapace. He can’t say he likes the presumption, but at least they’d left him with the same body; he’s kind of attached to this one now.  
  
He’s lying on the floor, which would be bad enough even if the floor wasn’t a kind of cool, unbroken tile, and looking up he can just barely see the structural lines and finely patterned glass of the ceiling high above, before it gets washed out by the golden light shining down.  
  
The chamber - part of the angelic Silver City, he’s guessing - is shaped like a giant, ornate hemisphere, marked with golden architecture and Holy symbols all around its curving walls, pillars of sculpted and sanctified ‘glass’ so clear they’re nearly invisible.  
  
He thinks if he squinted up at the undefined and dazzling light for long enough, he might be able to make out the countless concentrated bursts of infinite brightness as the souls pass up and into Heaven.  
  
As prisons go, it’s definitely the most lavish one he’s ever been in.  
  
On his feet, Jared walks the outside edge of the room, not surprised but still disappointed at the complete lack of any kind of seam or doorway, every surface unbroken and stubbornly unresponsive.  
  
Time probably doesn’t exist here, the Silver City being _just_ to the side of the flow of causality like standing on the bank of a river, but as he paces from one sloping side of the chamber to another, running hands through his hair in frustration and sometimes calling out into the still, dustless air for someone to come and tell him why he’s being kept here, it still feels like the weight of hours or days is slowly pressing down against his shoulders.  
  
It shouldn’t be possible to feel this claustrophobic in a room so large and open, so illuminated from the outside, but that’s not stopping Jared from breathing harder just to have something he can hear in the booming silence, even the thumps of his now-booted feet muffled to near silence.  
  
“Pacing won’t help.”  
  
Jared spins at the sudden voice, not quite holding in the noise of surprise. Or the second noise of surprise when he realises who he’s looking at.  
  
“Remiel?” he asks, even though now he’s put a Name to the grey eyes and coolly measured expression, it can hardly be anyone else. It doesn’t help explain why the angel supposedly in charge of running Hell is up in Heaven instead. He hadn’t Fallen, but Hell isn’t exactly the kind of place you can leave unattended, and Jared doubts that the demons or old, dependable Duma can keep it in hand without a more… outspoken form of governance.  
  
“Don’t sound so shocked, Jared,” Remiel says, standing preternaturally still in his odd-looking suit; angel-white but with interlaced fine lines of inky black-red, like vines worming their way across the fabric.  
  
Jared wonders how deep that blackness runs, now.  
  
“No, not shocked,” he assures pointlessly, maybe taking a step back and maybe taking three. “It’s just… been a while, that’s all.”  
  
Remiel shrugs, a slow fluid move that doesn’t seem to fit him quite right. “Running Hell is a full time job, Jared. As is maintaining the state of affairs on Earth I would think.”  
  
Jared concedes with a nod. “I do what I can.”  
  
“Yes, you do, don’t you. Which is, of course, why you’re here.”  
  
“Meaning what?” Jared asks, then “Where am I, anyway?” since it seems about time he did.  
  
Remiel gives him a curious look, squinting those ageless grey eyes of his. “You don’t know?”  
  
“Well, I’m asking aren’t I?” Jared sighs.  
  
“You’re in the Silver City,” Remiel tells him, and Jared can’t suppress the eye-roll, even though it’s a tellingly human thing to do. It was worth being on Earth, Jared thinks, just to learn to roll his eyes.  
  
“I know that,” he says, “but I’ve never seen this place, where are we?”  
  
The look Remiel gives him this time is almost sad, and might be, if he’d ever actually experienced real sadness. “We’re in the Mausoleum of the Archangels, Jared,” he says, soft and low, resonating in the chamber like the thrum of some absent harp.  
  
Jared feels his eyes widen, his hands going slack at his sides. He almost wants to call Remiel a liar.  
  
Jared might’ve distanced himself from his Choir of Angels, may have stepped back from the messier aspects of Heaven’s work, but he’s still one of the Host. Still one of them enough to feel his ‘skin’ crawl as he cranes his neck to look around his would-be prison, to feel uneasy even with the ethereal sunlight warming his face.  
  
The Archangels aren’t quite as humans would imagine them. The Silver City - the one place in all Creation that _predates_ Creation and exists outside of everything - has a hierarchy, one that’s strictly followed in almost every aspect, but the Archangels were different. The closest analogy would be secret agents; military operatives; or most often, assassins. They were the few noted angels who, because of proven talent or given position, were granted the ability to rise above all but God, to carry out the ultimate will of Heaven.  
  
They’ve been responsible for some of the greatest of Heaven’s works. And by extension, some of the greatest atrocities. Inspiration of the most noted prophets, artists and warriors of mankind. Destruction of cities and whole populations. Casting out those who Fell in the ultimate Rebellion. Expelling the first humans from Paradise.  
  
It’s an exalted position, but one that carries a high price. No Archangel has ever lived past the purposeful boundary of his or her mission. They’re designated, imbued with Power beyond their fellows, and assuming they survive their task, that power then ultimately destroys them. It’s the way it’s always been, either because power so easily corrupts, or because even angels have a limit, set somewhere deep down in their immaterial makeup since the patterning of Creation.  
  
And so the Mausoleum was crafted, in the highest point of the largest ethereal structure within the Silver City. A magnificent and venerated site, where the last few flecks of splintered grace retrieved from the remnants of every Archangel are laid to rest in memoriam for all Time.  
  
It’s the closest the Host has ever come to humanity’s ability to mourn their losses, and create beauty out of such desperate pain.  
  
And almost none of them will ever set eyes on it.  
  
But now that Jared knows to Look, he can see the glinting sparks evenly cast around the golden, flowing curve of the room. Each set into a tall, slender spire of something that looks like silvery glass, but wouldn’t melt or shatter or crack under the highest heat or greatest impact.  
  
Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Chamuel, Jophiel and Zadkiel. The seven Archangels, with strength, knowledge and wisdom beyond every Choir and Sphere. The ones who stood before The Presence; looked upon God’s light and burned with it. All of them dead, but still living on, encapsulated forever as relics; evidence of Heaven’s might.  
  
Jared regrets asking now. The whole place is disturbing in a way he never would’ve expected.  
  
“This is sacrilege,” he points out, facing Remiel again. “Using this, of all places, as a jail for one disobedient Principality. I’m surprised the others let you do this.”  
  
Remiel shrugs again like he’s trying it out for size. “You’ve been gone a long time, Jared. And we’ve grown impatient enough to forgo some of the old… formalities.”  
  
Jared huffs a confused and humourless noise. “So I’m, what? Being kept out of the way? Shoved aside so you can have your war?”  
  
“No Jared,” Remiel says, “you’re here for a much more specific purpose.” He steps closer, light flaring in his eyes that makes Jared think of a train barrelling out of a tunnel. “You’re to be the next war leader of Heaven,” he says, like it’s forgone and concluded, like it’s a _good idea_. “A new Archangel for a new kind of battle: the war of Heaven and Hell against mankind.”  
  
* * *  
  
Jensen pours himself out the door, tugging it shut with a thought and feeling the protective symbols seal up behind him, and turns around only to barely avoid colliding with two people, who at no point in their combined existences could ever’ve really been called ’people’.  
  
If his day gets any better, no torment in any Circle’s gonna be able to compare.  
  
“Jensen,” one of them drawls, like it’s a coincidental meeting after years of separation, her voice springing from jagged things being scraped across chalkboards. She’s tall, with vibrant red hair cascading down her shoulders like curls of smoke, and a smile sharper than the sharpest knife. In a small touch of creativity, her eyes match her hair.  
  
“It’s been a while,” the other one says, a stocky older guy with a lazy smirk and close-cropped hair, and clothes that Jensen suspects are an exact copy of a random storefront display. This denizen’s idea of ‘passing for human’. No imagination whatsoever.  
  
Jensen slaps a smile across his face like a thin, flimsy coat of paint that’s sure to peel away at any moment, drops his hands nonchalantly into his pockets. “Hey guys,” he says, chipper. “Long time no torture. How’ve you been?”  
  
“Busy,” the guy drawls, smirk getting wider, and beneath his skin he’s all fangs and forked tongue and rotted flesh to Jensen’s Sight. Just what Jensen needs: a traditionalist. “We were runnin’ topside some standard possessions when the boss told us to check up on you. Seems you’ve gathered quite a rep Downstairs for not toeing the party line.”  
  
“I do my job,” Jensen insists, letting some of that occasionally useful inbuilt demonic anger through to the surface, feels it glint in his eyes and making his teeth look sharper in the low light. “I don’t disobey any more than they want me to. Might be why I’ve got more commendations than both you miserable dregs put together.”  
  
They grit their teeth and crack knuckles inside balled fists, the male demon’s eyes flaring with his shoddy temper. “Yeah, but c’mon Jensen, we all know it ain’t just about the _job_ don’t we? What we do’s supposed to be more than that.”  
  
Jensen shrugs like this conversation isn’t gonna end badly no matter what he does. “Hey I’m as up for evil as you guys are,” he insists, “I’m just not as behind the times, is all.”  
  
“Really?” the redhead hisses, disturbingly catlike for the distinctly canine teeth. “You think you’re better than us? We didn’t get ourselves on permanent assignment in this cesspool, now did we?”  
  
Being the old fashioned, dogmatic types who decided even as they flung their halos away like horseshoes to believe everything the more uppity angels said about Hell, Jensen doubts there’s anything he could tell them that they’d find impressive.  
  
Really, Jensen doubts these two’ve been moved by any kind of work since sometime around the fourteenth century. For demons like them, the fourteenth century’s become that one restaurant they used to visit that closed down, and now every establishment they go into has to suffer for the comparison.  
  
There are few things more annoying than a bunch of demons who won’t stop whining about how good they used to have it, even as they ignore just how easy it is to drive humanity to sin with the smallest things. Like those fake pockets that appear randomly on some clothes and not others, purposefully mingled with real pockets just to rub salt into the still-bleeding wound of soul-deep disappointment and burning frustration.  
  
But no, there’ll be no convincing them. Which is why the Dark Council will have sent them in the first place. Hell, Jared had said to him once, is its own collapsing mineshaft. Jensen had voiced the mandatory disagreement, but looking at the bloodthirsty morons standing in front of him, he has to admit there was sense behind it. He hates that.  
  
“So,” he says, “come to drag me Down yourselves right now? Or is this just the in-person eviction notice? I get two weeks to pack?”  
  
“Oh you’re coming with us,” the male demon says with a smirk. “Bosses want you involved in the planning, since you’ve got such… insider knowledge an’ all.”  
  
Jensen tries really hard not to imagine why he’s suddenly of so much interest, or what his know-how has to do with Hell’s plan. There’s nothing they could want him for that he’d call appealing.  
  
“Yeah,” he drags out, pinching his mouth in some fake consideration. “But see, I already told the schmuck exec They sent before you no, and I’ve got kind of a pet peeve about repeating myself. So, you can go back to whatever menial bullshit you were doing, and we’ll just pretend this never happened.” He finishes on a grin like _ta-da!_ even as he’s gripping his fingers around the small-but-powerful objects he’d retrieved from his safe, even more glad he’d never told Jared about them given the mess they’re both in now. Jared would have tutted over them and stuck them on a shelf in a warded vault, lest they fall into the wrong hands.  
  
Well, hands wronger than Jensen’s anyway.  
  
“That’s not gonna work for us,” says stunt demon #2, her fingernails looking less like fingernails and more like talons. “They gave us permission to haul your angel-loving ass to the Pit in pieces if you refused.”  
  
“We’d been hoping you would,” her companion adds. “More fun this way.”  
  
Jensen sighs, trying not to wrinkle his nose at the brimstone stink these two dragged up with them. He takes his hands out of his pockets, fingers clenched and tingles sparking up his arm, in that kind of non-pain humans can only ever experience if they slam their elbows into something.  
  
“I figured you’d say that,” he says, followed by a stream of distinct non-English and an artful spreading _flick_ of his hands out toward them.  
  
Then he tries not to flinch at the horrendous screams that pierce the air, as both the Fallen cronies erupt into fire.  
  
Angels and demons, coming from the same original stock, can summon either Holy Fire or Hellfire. Depending which side you’re on, you’ll be better at summoning one than the other, and more vulnerable to whichever isn’t ‘yours’, but it’s the same transmaterial principle. The hazards of a demon summoning Holy Fire are a little like trying to juggle grenades after you’ve pulled the pins out, and watching an angel summon Hellfire will either involve massive amounts of collateral damage, or be just plain embarrassing for all involved.  
  
Holy Fire is a humming golden-yellow, like sunlight concentrated and aimed by a kid with a giant magnifying glass, while Hellfire is red and black and creeping. Jensen managed to turn _his_ fire a sharp, acid green about a thousand years ago, and never changed it back because it meant he could brag to the others in the Legion of Darkness, _and_ to Jared and by extension the angels. That kind of win-win was just too good to give up once he had it.  
  
Plus, he doesn’t know how he did it in the first place. But no one needs to know that.  
  
The flames spread across and between and around them, rushing with a kind of negative sound that goes past silence and into the awful death-void underneath it. Green light scatters nightmare shadow down the hallway and over Jensen’s skin as he shields his eyes, the stench of the unnatural flame almost worse than the shredding of the demon’s real shapes beneath the illusion of their human skins.  
  
With a last, convulsing rush of boiling air, Jensen’s Hellfire and all trace of the demons is gone, the small corridor so dark in comparison even Jensen has to strain to see past his own nose. Charring scorches mark the walls and floor and ceiling, the kind that’ll never come out even if you tore up everything and rebuilt it, damage going right down to the unseen fabric that lies under the ‘real’ stuff people built on top of it.  
  
Jensen takes a bare lungful of a breath, and coughs most of it back up without hesitation. He’d feel bad for his landlord if he hadn’t just ruined the entrance to his own loft and effectively stuck a big red pin in Hell’s map of the world with a label that reads ‘I’m fucking things up for you, please come and kill me’.  
  
Dusting the powdery leftovers of the Hellfire ampules from his palms like chalky ash, he double-times it down the stairs and out to the sidewalk, the Cadillac faithfully unlocking and rumbling to life just as he reaches it.  
  
Flinging himself into the seat and glaring at his balefully silent cell phone so hard the casing smolders a little, Jensen slams the door closed and _encourages_ the car to make its way faster than the old red-eyed horses that’d been the fashion Downstairs once upon a time.  
  
If he’s gonna make it to LA before The End, the world is just gonna have to deal with a little bending of the so-called unchangeable laws of matter and reality. People get way too hung up on those.  
  
The way Jensen sees it, if he can’t get to Jared and find some way of calling the whole Judgement thing off, then the world will have much, much worse to deal with than a demon who puts a dent in the sound barrier.  
  
* * *  
  
Jared stares at Remiel’s stony expression, lost for words in what a certain demon would say was the first time in centuries. He’d only be slightly right about that.  
  
“Me?” Jared says, completely incredulous. He should feel honour, or a sense of purpose. But he’s having trouble getting past the surrealism. “You want _me_ to be an Archangel?”  
  
“Why do you think you were made our appointed representative on Earth to begin with?” Remiel points out. “Did you think we assigned you without a purpose? When Hell’s attache is one you knew so well even before his Fall? This has been the new Plan since The Creator fell silent. We have no choice, not now.”  
  
“You need an Archangel so badly, then you take the job,” Jared says, waving a hand at Remiel. Then he notices the way Remiel’s looking off to the side, at the nearest shimmering grace remnant, the one belonging to Michael.  
  
“Oh,” he breathes, looking at Remiel suddenly not for who is, but for what he _does_. “You can’t, can you? Because none who’ve ruled in Hell may serve in Heaven; that’s His Word, immutable right down in the fabric of Creation. It’s why Lucifer never came back, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And you were hoping, what? That the Power would convince me to side with you over mankind?”  
  
“The Power of an Archangel is absolute,” Remiel says, his jaw firming as he squares his shoulders. “It would remake you; rebuild you until you no longer remembered it was not how you always were. It would end this pointless detente you and that demon are so invested in.”  
  
“For the benefit of humanity,” Jared insists, his arms gesturing out from his sides as his voice climbs. “For the ones we’re supposed to be serving.” His hands drop against his sides, and he tries to make himself sound as genuine as he can. “If either side wins, everybody loses, I thought that was clear to everyone.”  
  
Remiel scoffs. “Do you think humanity will be content with their own world forever?” He shakes his head, a sharp and vicious movement. “No, Jared. Eventually, they _will_ climb to Heaven or fall to Hell, in life as well as death, and then our rightful place will be lost.” His voice is rough, almost like he’s choking on the words. “They’ll usurp us, the way they did in His heart in the Beginning. Even in the Garden, the true serpent was always man.”  
  
Jared can feel how wide his eyes are, how his jaw’s gone slack. He’s heard from Jensen and through the angelic grapevine that Remiel’s been taking a harsher stance, but he never imagined it’d come to this. “You can’t seriously think that humans will… will take over Heaven? _Or_ Hell? It’s insane!”  
  
Remiel steps closer, static buzzing in the air and striking Jared’s skin. “How long have you been extolling their grand potential? How much of God’s domain have they blithely plundered already? And how many of them even now consider themselves above us? Above _Him_. ”  
  
“And you think this is what He wants? He _gave_ them the Earth; and the stars and the universe to explore and discover. We were told to bow before them, not curtail them, and absolutely not to destroy them because of some imagined threat.”  
  
“Imagined?” Remiel snarls. “They’re a dangerous, savage creation, Jared. You live among them but you don’t _see_. I’ve spent millennia watching the things they’re capable of; the basest acts of their existence. They will rise, in arrogance and defiance, to conquer as they have so many times before; cruelly, and without wisdom.”  
  
“So you’re going to strike first,” Jared mutters, disbelieving but with mounting horror. “Heaven and Hell; finally putting aside the old grudges, just so you can lay siege to the Earth.”  
  
“Their ascendance can still be prevented,” Remiel says in a low, promising voice. “We can scour them from Creation; put a stop to the danger here and now, before they claim our Kingdom for theirs. We expelled them from Paradise, and now we’ll do it again.”  
  
Jared backs away. “I won’t help you,” he insists. “I won’t, Remiel.”  
  
“You’ve had the luxury of time, Jared,” he intones. “And now it has abandoned you. This tomb, dear brother, will soon become yours. You’ve been chosen to lead.”  
  
“I refuse,” Jared says instantly, unequivocally. Righteously.  
  
Remiel smirks, and it doesn’t suit him. “Perhaps ‘chosen’ was the wrong word. You’ve been drafted, Jared. Purposefully selected of all the Host, to become the weapon we need.”  
  
“Call it whatever you want,” Jared mutters, “I’m still not accepting.” Jared’s never wasted his time trying to think of a Holy order he’d refuse. It’s anathema to everything they're supposed to be.  
  
Through the fear gripping at his heart and the anger humming in his veins, comes the unbidden thought that disobeying shouldn’t be this easy. And it definitely shouldn’t feel this… _right_.  
  
Somewhere, hopefully out of the reach of Hell and all its minions, Jensen is probably smirking to himself.  
  
“You’re one of us, no matter what your time among the humans might lead you to think,” Remiel tells him, seeming oblivious to the painful irony. “If you insist on being intransigent, then you will remain here, as a prisoner. With your influence on Earth gone, and your counterpart dealt with, we _can_ do this without you. You won’t be allowed to interfere anymore.”  
  
Jared tried desperately not to fixate on the _dealt with_ part of that. He’ll just have to trust Jensen to take care of himself, which is something he’s always been good at. Hell probably thinks he’ll go quietly. They’re in for a surprise.  
  
“You know you don’t have to do this,” Jared impresses, taking a step toward Remiel for the first time since he was brought here. “You have a choice.”  
  
“Like you did?” Remiel mocks.  
  
“Yes,” Jared says simply.  
  
“But here you stand,” Remiel points out, waving one arm absently at the chamber around them. “Even with everything you’ve done and tried to do, you are here, and you are ours. What’s your choice worth now, Jared?”  
  
Jared meets Remiel’s impassive glare with every bit of sincere belief he has, every strength of conviction he’s clung to for so long. “Everything,” he says, quiet and intent. “It’s worth everything. Because if this -” Mirroring Remiel’s gesture “- is all I have to look forward to, then my choices are all I’ve got left.”  
  
The way Remiel shakes his head this time is pitying, as though Jared was the one throwing away a literal eternity of service and upholding His wishes for humanity.  
  
Jared liked his existence a lot better when the line between Good and Evil wasn’t smudged so badly.  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” Remiel finally says, and Jared feels like the distant walls are compressing inward, the high vaulted ceiling looming downward instead of allowing Heaven’s light to shine on him from above. This is what true helplessness is, he thinks.  
  
“I _won’t_ help you,” Jared repeats, a sharpness digging behind his eyes and heaviness dragging about his shoulders.  
  
Remiel sighs, but there’s no real remorse or even shock on his face. “Then stay,” he says, a hardness edging into the words. “Stay here, and revel in your empty choices.”  
  
The air ripples, and with a distorted sound like a beating of invisible wings, Remiel’s gone, and Jared stands alone in a gold-lit grave.  
  
* * *  
  
It’s raining, which Jensen thinks is pretty appropriate given the oncoming Armageddon, but it’s not really that sort of rain. Partly because it’s barely a fine mist that’s coating the roads and the windshield of the Cadillac as he slows and _ensures_ himself a parking spot, and partly because it’s raining water rather than fish. Or live frogs.  
  
From the outside, Lux looks like any number of nightclubs Jensen’s been to in this century; it might have a more ‘exclusive’ air, with the doormen dressed sharply and the deep line of people waiting behind the velvet rope showcasing a serious amount of money with their own outfits, but given the management Jensen’s almost disappointed by how _ordinary_ it all is.  
  
Leaving the car to fend for itself, Jensen casually strolls up to the main entrance, already preparing a careful dose of his usual charm in case there’s any issue with him jumping to the head of the line.  
  
Apparently there isn’t, since the moment he reaches them, the towering guys who might be entirely human and might be human with a side of steroids pull the silver and glass door wide, and usher him inside without a word.  
  
He waves off the coat checker and tugs his jacket straight as he steps into the main room, a wide, artfully decorated space with an impressive bar running in a half-circle from the wall, and being tended by two women who are either twins or from the same demonic line.  
  
There’re no signs of security, natural or otherwise, and no sigils or wards that Jensen can feel that might be a problem. It should be reassuring, knowing he’s not about to be cast out or discorporated, but all it means is that the Morningstar _wants_ him to be here, which Jensen thinks you’d have to be plain stupid not to find a little worrying.  
  
There’s a small crowd spaced around the room, some taking up the smooth leather furniture and glass tables set about in threes and fours, and some standing at the bar or in groups. The atmosphere is one of easy charm, but there’s the barest trace of _something_ hiding just out of Sight like a whisper of music on the wind, or the impression of a great monster lurking beneath the surface of a calm lake.  
  
A few people flick glances at Jensen as he passes, eyes either normal or sparking red or white with Otherness before returning to their drinks and conversations. In a place like this, one random demon is just like any other. At least until news of Jensen’s little fiery revolt begins to spread.  
  
A passing waiter with skin so pale it’s basically an inverse of the black tux he’s wearing hands Jensen a drink from the centre of an otherwise empty tray, without even breaking stride. Taking a cautious sip, Jensen finds it’s his favourite drink, made exactly how he’d ask for it, or more likely how he’d make it himself, since so few barkeeps have ever done it justice.  
  
Lucifer might’ve taken his toys and left the sandbox, but he’s still the original Tempter, the first and best at the game of playing to people’s wants and weaknesses.  
  
Jensen can’t help but be a little impressed.  
  
He walks past the bar’s patrons, trying to think how to ask for the boss without getting given a runaround he doesn’t have time for. Or looking like a delusional nutjob ranting about the Devil.  
  
A woman holding court from an elegant sprawl in an armchair points a manicured finger off toward the other side of the room, not once looking up at him or stopping her discussion with the enthralled crowd on the sectional opposite. Or spilling her crystal glass of what Jensen can vouch for as being human blood.  
  
Following the hint leads him to the room’s main attraction; a raised and rounded dais subtly spotlit from above, and displaying a white grand piano and its player, the flawless notes of a piece he’s sure Jared could name unfurling into the air.  
  
Just before he reaches it, he’s intercepted by a woman in a cape and hood, with a white mask covering half her face and dark hair running down to her waist. The fine silver name tag, with a red, stylised _L_ embossedinto one corner reads ‘Genevieve’, which definitely isn’t the name Jensen would’ve voiced. Not like he’ll contradict it though, to a creature as old and powerful as she is, Jensen’s just a few rungs from the bottom of the ladder.  
  
“I need to speak with him,” Jensen tells her, tacking on a frighteningly sincere “Please.”  
  
Her mouth - the half not covered by the mask - pinches a little, and her eyes are so black it’s like they go on forever, the void that sits between the stars. Which seems appropriate, considering who her partner is.  
  
She scrutinises him with a kind of depth that Jensen will usually go to great lengths and misdirections to steer clear of, the sort of awareness he hasn’t had aimed at him since he chose his particular path in the order of things. It probably makes her the only person in Creation besides Jared who could read him so well. He’s not sure how he feels about that.  
  
Lucifer must be even more of a charmer than Jensen remembers, to convince her that he’s worth her attention.  
  
“It’s important,” he promises, knowing she likely doesn’t care, but figuring the honesty might be surprising enough to make a difference.  
  
Finally she sighs and nods toward the dais, steps aside to let him pass. Jensen feels the sudden lack of her stare like oxygen pouring into a vacuum.  
  
Stepping to the edge of the platform like he’s walking to the gallows, Jensen makes himself walk onto it, the piano’s seamless melody rising to a cascade of highs and lows like it’d been timed just for him. Which it might’ve been, given the sense of humour of the guy tickling the ivories.  
  
The piece finishes on a light dashing of notes like rain falling onto the surface of leaves, Jensen standing next to the glossy, curving instrument.  
  
Sitting on the short leather bench in front of the keys is a guy probably not much shorter than Jensen, with dark hair too precisely ruffled to be anything but intentional, stubble lining his jaw and eyes the kind of intense blue the sky was before anything had been created under it, the barest hint of a gold ring glimmering around their edges. He’s wearing a silky-looking white shirt under a trim black waistcoat, his feet pressing the pedals in sharp-toed glossy shoes, a blood red cravat slung around his throat.  
  
“You’re a very brave idiot,” he says, long fingers still resting lightly on the keys. The aura of Power around him is like trying to breathe in a room full of steam.  
  
“I don’t want trouble,” Jensen tells him, which is a hugely ridiculous thing for a demon to say, but then context really is everything.  
  
The Morningstar half-turns on the bench to look at him, a physical kind of looking that makes Jensen aware of every atom of himself. The name tag on his waistcoat reads ‘Misha’. Not the strangest name he’s had, Jensen supposes. “Oh I know why you’re here,” he tells Jensen, plucking a wineglass from off the piano’s lid and swirling it in his fingers. “Even if you could hide your intentions from me in my own establishment, word’s been filtering through the ether since Jared was summoned away, and my psychics are very good at what they do.”  
  
“Mixing cocktails?” Jensen says with an eyebrow raise.  
  
Luc--Misha, smiles a little, and Jensen thinks this is how humans must feel when looking at a lion. It doesn’t matter if it likes you, you’re still something to be digested.  
  
“Such willingness to die, for a demon,” Misha muses, with a sip of his drink, eyes flicking briefly to the air above Jensen’s head. “Is it redemption you want? To return to the flock and do His will?”  
  
Jensen snorts like it’s a reflex. “Never really was my crowd,” he says, understating.  
  
“No,” Misha says, something else hiding under his scrutiny now. “Interesting, the way it all works out. I’ll give Him credit where it’s due, He’s a damn good judge of character.” He chuckles a little into a drink of wine, shakes his head as he puts the glass down.  
  
Jensen tries not to shift on his feet, to think about the fleeting pass of moments as that one ultimate deadline creeps closer.  
  
Finally he sighs. “If you’re just dragging out the ‘no’ I’ll get back out there and find some other way. Short on time and all that.”  
  
Misha looks out the nearest window at the dreary darkness beyond, his fingers idly playing out a few smooth notes.  
  
When he turns back to Jensen his eyes are brighter, sharper. “If I’m going to break my long-standing position of neutrality,” he starts, and Jensen tries not to twitch. “Then I’d like to at least know _why._ ”  
  
“You’re the only other angel on Earth,” Jensen says, and Misha makes a show of pondering that for a second.  
  
“True, I suppose,” he drawls. “Unless you count Azrael, but I doubt you’ll be wanting _his_ help. But so little interests me anymore, Jensen. I’d like to know why I should care about your predicament.”  
  
“Why?” Jensen repeats, stalling, mind going a little blank.  
  
Misha nods. “Seems existence is about to suffer the tedium of a violent redecorating; everything in this realm torn apart and remade, and here you are scrambling after a single missing angel. I want to know why.”  
  
“They need him for something,” Jensen says, not a lie but a more convenient truth. “I imagine snatching him back would be a real thorn in their side.”  
  
“Oh no doubt,” Misha agrees with a tiny smirk, like he’s playing a role. Aren’t they all. “But it’s you that has me curious, Jensen. Beyond Heaven’s little schemes and Hell’s machinations, I want to know what motivates _you_.”  
  
Jensen swallows, the inescapable pressure of the most powerful angel in Creation staring right into his eyes like a vice grip on his temples. “I’m a demon,” he says, shrugging with a wry twist of his mouth. “I want what all demons want. Chaos, entropy, to generally fuck with the man Upstairs.”  
  
That pressure intensifies, making Jensen grit his teeth. “You can’t lie to the Prince of Lies,” Misha says, low and intent. “And I think we both know you’ve never been that feeble-minded.”  
  
Jensen tries to think of any plausible reason he’s asking for help with cracking Heaven like a safe. Then he decides on the deflective option. “S’a lotta smoke you’re blowing,” He grits out through his teeth. “Good thing I’ve built up a tolerance.”  
  
Misha laughs, his eyes sparking and the bubble of nonphysical pressure easing away into the air. “You see? There’s no denizen of the Pit, save maybe the First Fallen who’d dare speak to me like that. Even Gen is rarely that blunt.” He leans away from the piano, and Jensen has to stop himself taking a step back. “Now, tell me why this matters so very much, and you can have your gateway.”  
  
It sounds so simple, like such a small thing to ask. But then all of Lucifer’s bargains feel that way.  
  
Jensen looks into that expectant and infinitely patient stare, can’t help but think that the greatest of the Host isn’t worth a scrap compared to Jared in any meaningful way. He doesn’t so much decide to be honest, since he’s had enough of that to last him another five lifetimes already tonight, but he lets his eyes show things that haven’t seen the light of day since the light of day was a shiny new penny, looking down on a perfect Garden.  
  
“Ah,” Misha says softly, almost to himself. “There it is. I thought as much. That’s good, you’ll no doubt be needing that soon enough.”  
  
Jensen swallows, downs his drink and doesn’t even taste it, waves the glass off onto the bar with a thought. “So you’ll help me?” he asks, still waiting for the impact as the second shoe drops on him.  
  
Misha hums, nods just barely. “Jared’s always been Good,” he says, musing and like it’s the reason Jensen’s just proved it isn’t. “Invested in humanity more than I was ever inclined to be, and he’s gained more influence than he knows because of everything he’s done here.”  
  
“He doesn’t care,” Jensen shrugs. “He just wants to run his blessed bakery, hoard his books and help old people cross the street.”  
  
Another hum. “Like you he’s… unique. Part of the Plan that the rest of the Plan depends on. They need you - both of you - even though there are plenty who’ll hate you for it.”  
  
“That include you?” Jensen asks before he can help it.  
  
“This is all just… entertainment,” Misha drawls, gesturing at the piano and then the bar around them and seemingly at the world beyond that. “One song is the same as another, really; they all end eventually. Who’s to say the next version of Creation won’t be better?”  
  
“Not all of us are guaranteed a seat,” Jensen points out. He looks out at the random assortment of people in the club. “Doubt any of them would get even a second glance. Hope it was all worth it.”  
  
“I have no regrets,” Misha says, following Jensen’s gaze.  
  
Jensen can’t help but wonder if that’s true, or he’s got so many he just can’t tell the difference anymore.  
  
“You didn’t Fall,” he points out. “Not as far as some of us did.”  
  
Misha shakes his head. “I did what He asked me to, that was all. The consequences are… mine to live with.”  
  
“One less big consequence if you help me stop the world from ending,” Jensen says, and Misha breathes a small huff of a laugh.  
  
He raises a hand, and the dark-haired woman - Genevieve or Mazikeen or whoever she is now - appears like she’d condensed out of the shadow, which Jensen admits she may well have done, but he figures she’s just that graceful, that used to slipping around unnoticed.  
  
She hands Misha, a polished wooden box, so dark it looks like light couldn’t escape it’s grainless surface, a deep red line following the seal down the middle length like an instrument case. It looks old, and it feel unmistakably like Hell.  
  
“Something I’ve held onto for a long time,” Misha says, taking the box and running a hand over its lid, soft sounds like whispers pouring from it at the touch. “It might help you, and to be honest I don’t much like having it around.”  
  
He holds it out to Jensen, who takes it the way a hapless cartoon character takes a live stick of dynamite before it explodes. It doesn’t seem to weigh anything, despite the obviously dense wood and whatever relic of the Pit’s inside it. Jensen’s had a lot of experience with cursed objects, dark magic and things imbued with Power enough to drive people insane. He’s guessing that whatever’s in the box is something beyond any of that.  
  
“So, what?” he asks, warily eyeing them both as Misha leans back into Genevieve’s hand on his shoulder. “Do I click my heels and wish real hard?”  
  
Misha smiles, amused and _almost_ fond. “Find where they took Jared from,” he says. “I’ll reopen the door, but once it shuts you’re on your own. I have no sway in Heaven now.”  
  
Jensen doubts that, given just who and what he is, especially with God off in parts unknown. But push any harder and he’s likely to break something. Like his bones when the Morningstar gets tired of indulging him.  
  
He gets a nod from Genevieve, and the look in her eyes is every bit the warrior queen of the Lilim race he would’ve pictured her as.  
  
“Be quick,” Misha says, like Jensen needed the reminder. “And try not to die. If you screw this up I’m going to lose my club.”  
  
Jensen shakes his head as he steps off the stage, strides out of the room as the piano music picks up and follows him out through the doors. The rain’s getting worse, but it’s still just water, not even the holy kind. The Cadillac’s door clicks open as he crosses the street, two parking tickets bursting into flame and blowing away as ash when Jensen gets in. The engine growls impatiently, the sound of an animal that desperately wants off its leash. The gas gauge reads empty, but it’s been saying that for about fifty years now.  
  
Swerving into the road with a shuddering screech of wet tires, Jensen pictures Jared’s apartment in his head and encourages the car the way he might coax a Hellhound into running faster; with a lot of cussing and the promise of some carnage.  
  
The God Squad could’ve nabbed Jared from his bakery, or even from the middle of the street if they were feeling just that extra bit callous about hysterical human witnesses, no matter what the _Guidebook of Divine Intervention_ says, but Jensen knows Jared well enough to guess where he was.  
  
Damn angel’s always been such a homebird.  
  
The Cadillac shoves the world aside, and the road desperately pleads for mercy. Overhead, the sky splinters with lightning like a warm-up act.  
  
Hope is a bastard. But then again so is Jensen.  
  
* * *  
  
Jared’s back to pacing, because there’s nothing else he _can_ do at this point.  
  
Remiel’s left him here, cut off and imprisoned in what’s supposed be the true home of every angel, no matter how much more of a home Earth has come to feel like. The only kind of home he’ll have left if both sides destroy everything.  
  
He’s tried breaking out, and he isn’t strong enough. He’s tried slipping free of his body, letting the physicality of it drop away, but he can’t. The only thing he hasn’t tried to get out of the echoing chamber is Falling, but he doubts he could summon the kind of will it takes to do that.  
  
He snorts as he thinks that the one thing keeping him locked up here is that somewhere deep down he still believes the others can do the right thing. The ‘right thing’, whatever that means now.  
  
Hours pass as he slumps down against a cool wall, the bumps of embossed symbols pressing at his back, knees drawn up and forehead resting on them. One moment, completely indistinguishable from any other, the hair stirs away from his forehead; a sudden breeze out of nowhere brushing against his skin, the gentleness like a shove after so long with nothing.  
  
In an otherwise empty part of the hemispherical room, a point of sharp, blue light is spreading outward, undefined and abstract like a drop of radiant ink in clear water.  
  
As Jared gets to his feet, there’s a _pop_ and the point collapses inwards, a dent in the air becoming a funnel that shapes into a roughly circular portal. The kind Jared was deposited through, he supposes, if the Metatron hadn’t gotten so eager to drag him Up here that he’d knocked him out.  
  
The coalescing mass of the doorway flickers with sparks of interlacing light, whirlpooling faster and faster as Jared gets near it, the sound of it filling the space and rebounding in dissonant fists of noise.  
  
With an abrupt, sputtering rush of air and a tangy smell of ozone, the portal flares unbearably bright and spits out a figure that slides across the gleaming tile with a scraping thump, and a pained groan Jared is pitifully unsurprised at recognising.  
  
“Jensen?” he says, pointless but at least it voices his bafflement as the demon winces and sits up. He looks out of place in his dark clothes, maybe a little paler than the last time Jared saw him, but then they’d been in a much more arid clime then.  
  
Jensen groans again as he stumbles onto his feet, Jared taking an automatic step toward him in case the effort sends him back to the unforgiving floor. He finally seems to notice Jared standing there, blinking exaggeratedly hard until the sharp green of his eyes take Jared in.  
  
“Well,” Jensen says, coughing to clear his throat when it comes out a little strangled, leaning to put his hands on his thighs like he’s out of breath, squinting a little as he stares at Jared. “Your dress sense has gotten worse.”  
  
Jared shouldn’t be smiling.  
  
“I wasn’t given much of a choice,” he says, and Jensen’s gaze hardens.  
  
“Where are we?” he asks, then waves Jared off as he goes to answer. “Never mind, sure I don’t wanna know. Where’s the door?”  
  
Jared groans. “There isn’t one. That’s kind of the point.” Then like a sudden unexpected slap he asks “What are you even _doing here?_ ” Because now that the shock and slightly embarrassing joy over seeing Jensen has ebbed a little, the reality of there being a _demon in Heaven_ is clawing its way up his chest.  
  
It might be an instinctual response to who they are and where they’re standing, but Jared doubts it. There’s no standardised response that fits Jensen, not really.  
  
“What am I doing here?” Jensen echoes, with so much mockery that the most sarcastic human ever born would be impressed (though they probably wouldn’t be sincere about it). “I’m here to _rescue you_ , you idiot,” Jensen hisses, leaning close enough Jared can see the whites of his eyes, and the slight reddish tinge of his irises, like a forest fire with the green in the middle.  
  
Jared gapes. “Rescue me? Jensen that’s… you _can’t_. Look around, you think you’re getting out of here any more than I am?”  
  
Jensen shrugs. “There’s always a way out, we just gotta find it.” Just like that. Like it’s that simple. Jared’s lucky he can’t actually have an aneurysm.  
  
“You think I haven’t tried?” he says, stepping back and waving around at the grim expanse of the room. “There’s nothing here. This isn’t like that time in Italy, Jensen, there’ll be no bribing guards or sneaking out of here.”  
  
“Well,” Jensen says, a little hesitant (which is probably a lot for a demon who’s admitting to having done something underhanded with anything other than pride) “I _might_ have something that could help.”  
  
He reaches into his jacket pulls a dark wooden box from a pocket that never should’ve been capable of containing it.  
  
“You watch too much television,” Jared observes as Jensen hefts the box in his hands.  
  
“Oh please,” Jensen mocks. “I happen to know BBC America was one of yours.”  
  
Jared colours. “Yeah well, Heaven moves in mysterious ways.”  
  
Jensen snorts as he runs his fingers along the seam, which glows a dull red in his wake.  
  
“What-” Jared’s about to ask when the box opens with a hot breath of air. Then all he manages is a faint “Oh.”  
  
“Huh,” Jensen says, faintly surprised. “Well that’s interesting.”  
  
Sitting in the red velvet lining that’s moulded around it, is a wicked-looking two bladed knife, with a slightly curved black handle, the blades two differing patterned shades of silver and red, the silver so bright it’s whiter than bone.  
  
Jared’s heard of this knife, like he imagines most angels and demons have. Fashioned by the First being in Creation to be damned to Hell, literally from the essences of the Second and Third Fallen, who made up the Triumvirate of Hell before Lucifer’s rule.  
  
“Jensen,” Jared breathes, hand hovering just over the knife. “Where did you even get this?”  
  
“That devious sonuvabitch Lucifer must’ve taken it when he left,” Jensen says. “He said it could help.”  
  
“How?” Jared asks. “It’s not like we can fight our way out of a sealed room.”  
  
Jensen gets a contemplative look, lifts the knife from the box, the edges of the blades singing through the air even with that slow movement. He hands Jared the box and walks to the nearest wall behind him, pressing a palm flat to the surface before swinging back and ignoring Jared’s noise of protest as he drives the knife to the hilt into the wall.  
  
It sinks through the ethereal metal like a sword through bread, a wailing screech of more than just protesting alloy as faint light pours in around the blade, the damnation of the knife washing away the Holy material around it. Jensen steps back, leaving the knife embedded in the wall, turns to Jared and shrugs.  
  
“Can opener,” Jensen suggests.  
  
“We’re on the top of the city,” Jared points out. “There’s nothing around us but a long drop to a messy and quantumly complicated death.”  
  
Jensen frowns, looking at his feet and then sharply back at Jared. “Then we go through the floor,” he says, almost sharper than the knife he tugs out of the wall, the light from outside a pale stream highlighting the ground.  
  
Leave it to a demon to know the best way of climbing downwards.  
  
Jensen drops to his haunches, smoothly flips the knife in his hand. Jared drops down next to him, trying not to suggest that they _don’t_ cut a gaping hole in the angelic city. He’s more touched by Jensen’s determination than he should be under the circumstances.  
  
Jensen looks at him, eyes raking over Jared’s face before he mutters sharply under his breath, reaches out with his free hand and drags Jared in by the collar, captures his lips in a hard, wet (and slightly uncoordinated) kiss.  
  
Jared leans into the contact, kisses back, because really it’s been six thousand years, and there’s no one that’s being fooled at this point.  
  
It’s not drawn-out, or sweet, and there are no fireworks exploding over their heads (though the argument could be made that the ethereal light of Eternity and the glowing souls of mortal beings beats a few chemicals shoved into cardboard tubes), and no uprush of romantic music. There’s just the pressure of Jensen’s lips, the surprisingly _real_ scrape of his stubble along Jared’s skin, the feel of his hand on Jared’s neck as his fingers brush the skin behind his collar and his tongue flickers over Jared’s lower lip.  
  
It’s perfect.  
  
“Well,” Jared says, a little shaken when Jensen pulls back with darker eyes and a wet gleam on his lips. “Your timing is awful, but I guess that’s just you isn’t it?” A small hint of a smile meanders across his flushed lips at the same time that Jensen flushes like he’s embarrassed.  
  
“Yeah well, couldn’t risk…just wanted to make sure we were clear,” Jensen says, leaning back and looking anywhere but at Jared.  
  
“Completely clear,” Jared says, soft because he can and gentle because he wants to be, fingers brushing Jensen’s around the handle of the knife. “Now get us out of here, would you? No way your grand entrance is going unnoticed much longer.”  
  
“Oh I’m making waves all over today,” Jensen tells him. “You should’ve been there this afternoon, I was on fire. Well, there was fire involved at least.”  
  
Jared wants to ask, but he gets the feeling it’ll just add another layer of worry he could do without.  
  
He’s about to suggest hurrying up, even as Jensen grunts with the exertion of pushing the cursed knife through the stubborn floor, when that muffled wingbeat sounds again, and both of them spring to their feet as Remiel’s wrathful shape looms across the glow of holy light.  
  
“How convenient,” Remiel says, icy words colder than his eyes. “The deserter and the traitor, together at the End.”  
  
“Some nerve,” Jensen says, the knife pulled from the smooth tile and held toward Remiel. “Considering the crap you’ve been trying to pull around here.” He stands slowly, taking a purposeful step between Remiel and Jared. If it weren’t completely idiotic Jared might be flattered. “Who died and made you God anyway, you sanctimonious jackass?”  
  
Remiel’s expression darkens even further, a storm cloud ready to break open. He takes a striding step toward Jensen but stops short when Jensen raises the knife.  
  
“The Knife of the Fallen,” Remiel mutters, quickly regaining his composure. “You overstep yourself, demon.”  
  
Jensen barks a laugh. “Coming from you that’s a real compliment, _boss_ ,” he says. “Unless you wanna get real personal with this thing I suggest you let us leave. Don’t think anyone’s ever tried this pigsticker on an angel before, who knows what could happen.” He brandishes the blade back and forth a little for emphasis, Remiel’s hands clenching and opening as he circles around them like a shark.  
  
“Where would you go?” Remiel asks them both. “The war cannot be stopped. I have Lordship of Hell and the will of Heaven ready to swarm the Earth and all the worlds beyond. You think you can stop it?”  
  
Jensen hums, his grip tightening on the handle of the knife. “I think you were worried enough about them to start this in the first place; enough that you tried to knock us off the board. What’s wrong, afraid the humans won’t go as quietly with us whispering in their ears?”  
  
The fury on Remiel’s face is burning in the luminous glow around his head, the battle uniform he’s wearing shining whiter than the bloodless knuckles clenched at his sides.  
  
“You can’t stop us,” Remiel promises, and Jared wishes it felt like overconfidence.  
  
“I can stop _you_ ,” Jensen answers, a low grumble of words and the subtle raise of the knife.  
  
There’s a slight pause, barely a moment that stretches out in one of Time’s peculiar habits, then a blast of Power that flings Jared back the few feet into the wall, knocking the air from him and collapsing him to his knees.  
  
His vision swimming and head ringing, he looks up to see Jensen staggering with a punch from Remiel’s fist, sending him sprawling back across the ground.  
  
Jared wants him to stay down, to not force this any further even while he tries and fails to make himself stand. He wants to cry out to the others about the truth of what’s happening, even knowing they don’t care. Fallen is Fallen after all, and they’ve all bought into Remiel’s lies, happy to let them both rot.  
  
Jensen stumbles harder than Jared does as he stands, the knife still in his hand but his grip slack, blood on the corner of his mouth. He doesn’t know what’ll happen if Jensen dies here. No body, maybe no form at all, a demon killed in Heaven likely wouldn’t be recreated anywhere. No soul to pass to the next eternity.  
  
“Step forward then, demon,” Remiel taunts, holding his arms out as he steps closer to Jensen. “And have your resolution.”  
  
“Stop this,” Jared spits as he pulls himself up along the wall, Remiel hardly sparing him a glance. He lurches forward, almost loses balance just from that, the strangling grip of Power slamming into him before he gets close.  
  
Remiel’s hand reaches for the inside of his tunic, and Jared recognises the look in his eyes for what is, having seen it more times than he’d ever care to think about on the faces of the self-proclaimed righteous during the Rebellion. He darts forward, not thinking of anything except the pained twist of Jensen’s lips, and knocks into Remiel’s side. He isn’t strong enough to fight the Ruler of Hell, but he won’t let Jensen die as long as he can do something - anything - to stop it.  
  
He lands a few meagre blows before the shock of the move wears off and Remiel tosses him aside with barely a second before Jensen collides with him again, driving him back a few paces.  
  
“Your faith in mankind is misplaced,” Remiel promises, lashing out and driving a pained grunt from Jensen as more blows land across his torso and abdomen.  
  
“Not doing this for mankind,” Jensen chokes out, shambling forwards and ducking a forceful punch, some last reserve of energy as he kicks out hard enough to jar Remiel’s knee. Then he steps around and yells with the effort as he drives the knife up into Remiel’s side.  
  
With a grating, whining burst of sound, light cracks over the surface of Remiel’s skin, pours from his eyes and mouth in unbearably intense beams, until there’s a flare and a wash of sound that obliterates Jared’s view and grinds in his bones, and Remiel’s grace explodes in a burning flood of light, cracking the ethereal glass above them and charring the floor where he’d been standing.  
  
It dissipates slowly, coloured spots dancing in Jared’s eyes as he tries to blink them away and feel for where Jensen landed. Getting a grip on the wounded demon’s slightly shredded jacket, Jared eases him to his feet, pulling an arm across his shoulder and wrapping his own around Jensen’s waist.  
  
Where the spiralling, dimming splinters of grace and tatters of uniform were before, a tall figure in a long black cloak and hood stands, the draping shreds of the cloak bulging around what might’ve been a scythe and drawn about pointed shoulders.  
  
It regards them silently, a deep silence that only comes with an absence of anything to counter it, the ultimate silence.  
  
“So that’s it?” Jared asks, maybe a little incredulous and because he’s never been comfortable with long silences anyway. Against his side, Jensen could be snorting a laugh or coughing up blood. “It’s over?”  
  
EVERYTHING ENDS, the cloaked figure says with an awkward-looking shrug, in a voice like leaves curling up and bones turning to dust, the faintest twin lights from beneath its hood like flickering stars going cold. EVEN ETERNITY MUST FADE. BUT NOT YET.  
  
“S’helpful,” Jensen croaks, slumping harder against Jared. “You could’ve done something earlier, y’know.”  
  
The figure’s head tilts to the side, the hood shifting to reveal a glimpse of stark white teeth. And a stark white jaw. And some vertebrae. I AM EQUAL ONLY TO MY RESPONSIBILITIES, it says, like it’d be smirking if it had lips, or the facial muscles to arrange them. BESIDES, WHAT’S THE POINT IN ANYTHING IF I DO ALL THE WORK FOR YOU.  
  
“He has a point,” Jared says, not quite sure who to, since he doubts Jensen cares for the explanation. His arm squeezes a little around Jensen’s waist. “He’s the end, not the middle or the beginning. Some rules are still rules, no matter what.”  
  
The figure nods like a slow cascade of grave dirt, waves a hand that could only be described as _bony_ , and the portal reappears like it had always been there. GO, it says. THERE WILL BE NO SANCTION. YOU HAVE DONE YOUR PART.  
  
“Oh gee thanks,” Jensen mutters, hobbling a little to keep up with Jared’s gentle nudging toward the portal. He tugs at Jared’s sleeve until he stops, turns around. “What’re we supposed to do now?”  
  
The cloaked figure pauses, its steps silent and almost seeming to float, like it stays still and just moves existence around itself. When it turns in profile to speak, the silhouettes of great wings spread like rot and everlasting cold from its shoulders. YOUR TASK IS FINISHED. FOR NOW. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT IS UP TO YOU. HONESTLY I CAN’T SAY THAT I CARE ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.  
  
With that, there’s a _pull_ in the air and a muffled flap, and the figure vanishes.  
  
“He’s a real ray of sunshine,” Jensen grumbles as they reach the portal.  
  
“What did you expect?” Jared says, shoring Jensen up as helps him step one foot over the swirling blue glow of the threshold.  
  
“Well,” Jensen drags out, “we did just save him an assload of work; he could’ve thanked us.”  
  
“When was the last time anybody thanked _him_?” Jared points out. “Maybe he’s bitter.”  
  
Jensen hums, noncommittal, and shoves Jared through the gate, the vortex-spin of existence drowning the rest of the conversation.  
  
Jared’s last, slightly addled thought is _here comes everything._  
  
* * *  
  
The world shakes and rolls, slams hard into Jensen’s ribs and jars his limbs like a puppet with a drunk manning his strings, a truckload of anvils dumped onto him from a height, his brain rattling against the inside of his skull and adding technicolour blurs to his already muddied vision.  
  
He thuds into something, and comes to a graceless stop, biting his tongue around the blessing he wants to spit as he sprawls bruised onto an empty patch of floor. Somewhere else in the room, paper flap-flutters to the ground, and an angel swears loudly as he hits his head.  
  
Jensen would laugh, if it didn’t feel like he’d puncture a lung doing it.  
  
Tipping his head back, he sees an upside-down picture of Jared stumbling out of his kitchen, slumping back in a sprawl against the side of his counter, that damn goldfish looking down at him from the bowl on the table.  
  
“Everything still attached?” Jensen asks, not sitting up but pressing two fingers to his temple, which is actually doing a pretty good job of holding his brains on the inside, thankfully. The odds of Downstairs providing him with a new body now are less than stellar, he’s guessing.  
  
“Uh, seems to be,” Jared mutters, one hand pushing strands of hair out of his eyes and another resting loosely in his lap. “You okay?”  
  
Jensen shrugs, which is way less effective when done lying down. “Eh, I’ve had worse just showing up for work,” he says, trying to gingerly move around to make sure his bones aren’t in any more pieces than the manufacturer recommends.  
  
“I believe it,” Jared says, standing up and dusting himself free of both dust _and_ the scrapes he’d acquired back Upstairs. He walks over and offers Jensen a hand, which Jensen makes a show of thinking about, since demons can’t be seen to give into things like angelic courtesy so easy.  
  
Ultimately he’s just had enough of being on the floor, so he grabs one of Jared’s overly large paws and gets unceremoniously planted on his feet. A little effort wipes the bruises from his skin and the aches from his extremities, much easier done now they’re back on the level playing field again.  
  
“Well,” he says, “I can’t hear fire raining from the sky or the screams of the Rapture.”  
  
“No,” Jared agrees, moving to pull the blinds open, morning fog and everyday greyness outside amid the buildings and early risers. “Looks like it’s been cancelled on account of rain.”  
  
“Oh yea and verily,” Jensen mutters as he pulls his ruined jacket off and tosses it onto the table. He could fix it, but at this point the associations alone have ruined it for him. He ignores Jared’s affronted tutting.  
  
“So,” Jensen says, when Jared just keeps puttering around his kitchen, grimacing at some very impressive mold on whatever had been in the pan on his stove. “What exactly are we supposed to do now?”  
  
“What d’you mean?” Jared asks, with a clang of the veritable mountain of cookware by his sink.  
  
“I mean we’re probably out of work now, yeah?” He waves a pointless gesture at the clouds out the window. “Both of us marked as unreliable dissidents to the cause.”  
  
“Pretty sure you were marked as an unreliable dissident the moment you Fell,” Jared remarks guilelessly, waving a hand over the fishbowl until some multicoloured flakes appear in the water. “And are you really that mad about being kicked out of Hell? It’s literally a step up.”  
  
“Hey,” Jensen says, affronted because he’s supposed to be, wandering into the tiny excuse for a kitchen just to get in Jared’s way. “I’m unemployed. That’s just sad after six thousand years of having a career.”  
  
“A career in peddling sin to the lowest bidder,” Jared points out, miracling a cup of coffee onto the counter and nudging it towards Jensen.  
  
“And I was damn good at it,” Jensen says, swallowing the scalding liquid and sighing.  
  
“You don’t think it was worth it?” Jared asks, turning from rearranging the pile of dishes that reminds Jensen of some of the ‘art’ in his loft. He’s not looking forward to going back there either. He wonders if you can sign your lease over to a cat.  
  
“Not so much that,” he says slowly, finishing his coffee and wondering if he can prod Jared in hand-waving up a whole pot. “Heaven’s dull, and Hell’s rules make no sense, so the middle ground is just less of a hardship.”  
  
“There’s always Purgatory,” Jared points out, like he’s being helpful. Jensen supposes he can’t help himself.  
  
“Oh sure, if you can convince yourself that Purgatory’s anything more than the closet where He stuck His paintbrushes after the canvas was ready to hang. You wanna hide in there, you go right ahead. Just remember the only exit leads straight Down.”  
  
Jared grimaces, then makes a determined step in front of Jensen where he’s leaning back against the counter, looking much too tall for Jensen’s liking, leaning down a planting a kiss on his lips.  
  
Jensen’s hands flap a little by his sides, before he decides to go with it. He’s a little out of practice, not counting the sojourn Upstairs that’s already feeling like a particularly nasty dream he doesn’t want to dwell on.  
  
Jared makes a soft sound that Jensen decides he could _really_ stand to hear more of when Jensen nips at his bottom lip, another when he steps close enough for their hips to brush together, Jared’s hands on the counter at either side of Jensen’s hips, Jensen’s hands on Jared’s shoulders.  
  
There’s an almost peaceful silence when they separate that even Jensen would feel loathe to ruin.  
  
“Still worth it?” Jared asks, thankfully breaking the moment for them both, with a wide grin that showcases those ridiculous dimples of his.  
  
Jensen wants to laugh at the picture they must make; the only angel in Creation who’s ever lived up to the name and the one demon who never will. Except it’s never been that funny, this thing they have. Inconvenient, inexplicable; a tether that runs too long and snaps taught too late, both of them orbiting each other over so much history there’s no book that could cover it all or words to fit the meaning.  
  
And now here they are, the slow end of Time winding out like a spool of twine in front of them, both stuck with the freedom they carved into the Earth.  
  
Doesn’t sound so bad, really.  
  
“I guess,” he says, and Jared’s giving him a look that Jensen would call good excuse to hit the road if he had anywhere in mind to go.  
  
“You,” Jared starts, stunned speechless like he hasn’t been in at least a thousand years. “You have good intentions,” he says softly, looking at Jensen like he’s never seen him before, thumbing over Jensen’s cheek like he’s making sure Jensen’s really there.  
  
“You shut your mouth, angel,” Jensen gripes instantly, but nowhere near heated enough to be called sincere, and not even managing to duck away from the touch.  
  
Jared just rolls his eyes, kisses Jensen again, a chaste press of lips to lips that definitely should not be drawing that kind of a high noise from Jensen’s throat, repeated again with more intent, hot and wet and the singular point of Jensen’s body he can feel that’s not their knees bumping together and the insinuation of Jensen’s thigh between the both of Jared’s.  
  
When Jared pulls back, Jensen cards his fingers through Jared’s hair, tucks it away from hazel-gold eyes watching him with intensity that should scare the crap out of him.  
  
He traces whisper-light touches down Jared’s jaw, wide, pink mouth soft to the pad of thumb that skates over it, those eyes too soft to look at and too _everything_ to dodge away from.  
  
Long throat rolling beneath the meat of Jensen’s palm, warmth rising up from under the collar of that stupid uniform that Jensen’s gonna make sure he burns just to prove a point.  
  
“Jensen,” Jared whispers, and it’s a word he’s said more times than there are words in any language, but the heart Jensen still insists he doesn’t need skips like one of Jared’s records regardless.  
  
Jared’s hands fit to Jensen’s hips, working a shudder through Jensen’s body like a sudden chill, less space between them than it feels like you could squeeze an electron through, inane metaphors about dancing on the head of a pin aside.  
  
Squinting a little and concentrating, Jensen makes a complicated sign with his fingers until both their clothes slip into the ether like curtains drawing back into infinity, both of the abruptly naked and standing in Jared’s kitchen, the world turning unawares around them.  
  
“Cheating,” Jared says, low and kind of rough but still a singsong taunt.  
  
“Just trying to impress you, angel,” Jensen drawls with a hand pressing flat to the warm-wide span of Jared’s chest, the other winding ‘round to the back of his neck, fingers slipping beneath the soft strands of hair at his nape to tug him down.  
  
It’s been a while since Jensen actually tried to impress anyone with this particular skill, and that had mostly been in the eighteenth century when he’d needed to blow off steam after the Bastille fiasco. His tongue slides against Jared’s, another roughshod sound scraping low from Jared’s throat and Jensen’s teeth dragging against Jared’s bottom lip as he pulls back again, Jared’s breath fanning over his face alarmingly _real_.  
  
“Come on then,” Jared says, challenging with his eyes nothing but a golden ring of grace around a black maw of pupil. “Impress me.”  
  
Jensen looses a predatory growl that could put a Hellhound to shame as he steps away from the counter, reverses their positions and pushes Jared bodily back into the edge of it, thoughts of finally making him lose control just for Jensen to see, when there’s no motive beyond the deed itself.  
  
The thoughts flowing up like there’d been a trapdoor in his head, possessive nonsense he marks into Jared’s skin with his lips and intentions he makes clear with the grinding slide of their thighs, hips, groins, chests, together like water on water instead of water on stone. Wants this last bit of Jared that he’s never gotten, knows it won’t be enough, can already see himself tripping over into this new kind of Falling, wanting it again and again like it was the first and the last time, memory after puzzle-piece memory, the kind that don’t make the picture but slot together like mosaic tiles anyway.  
  
Jared full-on moans when Jensen works his legs apart wider and makes a home for himself between them, a promising and skillfully filthy kiss pressed into an already bruised mouth as he slides down to his knees, not breaking eye contact but using it like a tether to keep Jared’s focus.  
  
“Jensen,” Jared says, and Jensen shudders as his knees hit the linoleum, the trembling wave running down between his shoulder blades to his ass and into the persistent ache between his legs, ignored in favour of the chance he’s got spread in front of him like an offering.  
  
Hands skating up Jared’s thighs, up the fronts to the backs and down again, Jensen tries not to think the million and one words that’ve got no place in a demon’s head. Not like Jared couldn’t guess them all from the look passing between them anyway.  
  
Leaning up a little, the air’s full of Jared’s scent like pheromonal temptation better than anything Jensen’s felt, or held up to others to damn themselves with.  
  
Lucky he’s already damned, then, or the idea of this’d do it better, demon kneeling supplicant before an angel.  
  
Pressing sloppy-wet and open-mouthed marks into the muscled lines of Jared’s hips, the flat of his belly and the tight cords of sinew running like helpful direction to the burning blood-hot rise of his cock, Jensen can feel his eyelashes brushing over his flushed cheeks, eyes wanting to close and rely on smell and sound and the feel of Jared’s fucking enormous hands touching him, touching _him_ , with mindless want and desire instead of happenstance or necessity.  
  
There’s drool in his mouth to spare and an itching need for something that might be the immediacy of a dick between his lips, more contact or just to force all of Time to grind still and halt, let him drag the moment syrupy-slow through the rest of whatever measure of eternity they’ve got between them.  
  
Jared’s breathing gravelly insensible words that take apart Jensen’s name and piece it back together with pleas and easy begging, and Jensen lets his lips open slow around the flushed, round head of him, bitter-perfect taste making him groan as his thighs burn keeping him at the right height, hands restless-shifting against Jared’s skin.  
  
That first tight, wet _suck_ , and Jared groans out a jittering, wrecked cinder of a syllable that doesn’t even approach words, making Jensen wanna smile even with his lips already stretched.

  
Breathing the heady scent of Jared though his flared nostrils, he screws his mouth down tight around the thickness, parting his mouth for Jared to use.  
  
His tongue’s pressing and rolling against the head, slick and just outright enjoying the feel of it, when Jared’s makes a guttural, harsh noise that makes Jensen’s own dick leap, a jerky motion that drools precome messily onto Jared’s kitchen floor.  
  
He gets a few scant, incendiary moments to revel in the feel of Jared’s hips rocking slow into Jensen’s face, the heat of him there and gone and back over and over, before something in Jared snaps wide and Jensen’s sucking around a mouthful of cock going right to his throat and pressing deeper still, forcing him open around the thickness of it, bittersweet running over his tongue as Jared’s palms caress down the hollows of his cheeks, fingers almost to the back of Jensen’s head, cradling him and thumbs lining ‘round the shell of his ears.  
  
Sliding himself deeper onto Jared’s dick like he wants it more than the air he’s barely getting, moaning hot and hungry, and something there seems to hit Jared between the eyes from the shredded gasp and jerk of his trim hips forward, cock slippery-smooth against Jensen’s tongue as drool trails coolly down Jensen’s chin.  
  
Jared’s hands grip-clench over his hair, not enough to pull tight, but the promise is about as hot anyway, long fingers pressing tight to Jensen’s scalp as he gives in to the need to wrap a hand around his own dick and stroke to ease the humming _touchmefuckmeanything_ that’s pouring into every vein and out his every pore, feels like he could burst just from this.  
  
The obscene noise Jared’s flooding the room with now could make any porno track look pathetic, puts shame to every fantasy Jensen’s had and all the ones he’d never admit to having, whole sense of himself tunnelled down to how he never wants this to stop.  
  
Hopelessly gone, just hollows his cheeks and sucks as hard as he can as Jared shakes like a leaf and falls apart, the strength of him showing with every tense-trembling muscle in his stomach and shoulders, as he curls over and floods Jensen’s mouth, so much Jensen can’t hope to swallow it all even while his throat’s working, come spilling down his chin and his cheek, marks he wishes would last longer than they inevitably will.  
  
His lips go sloppy-loose around Jared’s still half-hard dick as he presses his thumb down hard into his slit and pulses sweet and painful and so fucking good across his fingers, slicking the tight skin and his balls beneath, the stretch of skin behind them, making him shiver with unanswered promises.  
  
That cliff-edge of oblivion sweeps past as he drops into the empty void of almost painful release, curling further over Jared with the force of it, muttering desperate and appropriately broken hallelujahs around warm velvet skin.  
  
Looking up at Jared through lashes matted thick with tears left by having his throat stuffed, Jensen’s rewarded with that long throat stretched up and begging for his teeth, chestnut hair and the ring of light that might be brighter and might be Jensen’s imagination.  
  
Drawing back with a hoarse-low pull of air, he swallows again just to feel the soreness, the tacky left-behinds of Jared’s come like he needs the reminder or the keepsake.  
  
There’s an impulse, like a dying ember working through his nervous system, to be soft, reverent while he might get away with it even though those things don’t fit him, not in the description of a job he doesn’t even have anymore.  
  
Jared’s fingers fit along his jaw, couple of them slipping into the white streaks on Jensen’s skin like it’s nothing, and maybe isn’t to someone who gives the way Jared does, because that _is_ what he is, job or not.  
  
Jensen doubts there’s a depth Jared could Fall to that’d make him any less of what he is, looking at Jensen in that moment. Take away the halo and the shimmery grace ring like an eclipse in each eye and he’s still _Jared_ , thousands of years older and only the better for it.  
  
He climbs the distance to standing on knees that tremble even if they don’t pop or ache, and Jared insists on kissing him deep and slow and learning quicker than Jensen thinks is fair.  
  
Their foreheads meet when their lips slickly part and Jared’s smiling with those dimples again, the almost physical rush of feeling making Jensen glad he fell before he Fell, just for the principle of things.  
  
Time, in a forgiving mood it seems, lends them hours at Jared’s swept-clean table getting steadily more drunk and sex-happy, Jared ignoring Jensen’s remarks about him not having a bed where his bed’s supposed to be, and Jared intent on mocking Jensen’s method of ‘living the human way’. They compromise on their bizarre choice in pets.  
  
Jensen doesn’t try and topple their domestic little house of cards, and does almost half as good convincing himself it’s strictly for Jared’s benefit. Almost. Maybe one third as good a job.  
  
They part ways for a brief while outside Jared’s building, the rays of a fresh and potential-filled day still blooming across the Earth without so much as a hint of Horsemen or infinite ranks of the ethereal or occult persuasions. Jared’s got a bakery to open, and Jensen’s got a landlord to de-hypnotise and possibly apologise to.  
  
He insists on driving Jared to his mortal place of employment, partly because he hasn’t seen this particular incarnation and partly because Jared’s expression when involved in any form of earthbound transport is hilarious.  
  
Leaving a pale and disoriented angel with kiss-bruised lips outside a bakery with a tragic pun for a name, Jensen lets a grin take over his mouth, and some obnoxiously loud singing ride the air outside his rolled-down window.  
  
 ** _EPILOGUE_**  
  
The coffeehouse - not Jensen’s usual sort, typical Jared in fact with its large windows and open spaces - is mostly empty when he arrives.  
  
The bell over the door jingles when Jensen steps in, and he either wants to roll his eyes or laugh at the stupid joke that forces its way into his head.  
  
He spots Jared in his seat at the counter easily enough; even with the lull; it’s difficult to miss a guy wearing a full white suit, whether you can see the halo or not. Much less one who’s that tall and has that much hair.  
  
He’s facing the other way, so Jensen takes a moment to really See him. Jared looks the same, right down to the fall of light across his hair and shoulders that can’t be explained by the bulbs or the daylight pouring through the windows. The halo is maybe a little dimmer, but that could just be Jensen’s inbuilt pessimism talking.  
  
Jensen tugs out a tall chair and sits down, notes the large white mug that wasn’t there a second ago, the lazy curls of steam carrying the unmistakable scent of a blend Jensen is totally sure they don’t serve here.  
  
He draws the perfection-scented air through his nose as slowly as possible, lets the feel of Gluttony settle over him.  
  
“You’re supposed to drink it,” Jared finally says, with a smirk so pronounced Jensen doesn’t have to look.  
  
“You don’t say.” He lifts the mug like it’s a valued Infernal Artifact, takes a slow breath followed by a slower gulp, relishes the thick flavour and the heat that spreads out after it. “Subtle choice there, with the suit,” he says, free hand making a little wavy gesture at the golden glow settled over Jared’s head and almost glinting off the fabric of his jacket.  
  
Jared’s cheek, the one Jensen can see anyway, lifts in a wider smile. “I thought it was fitting,” he says. “One last time and everything. Besides it’s been hanging in the corner of my closet for about eight different closets now.”  
  
“Good thing it can’t get dusty,” Jensen says over the lip of the mug.  
  
Jared finally turns a little in his seat, and Jensen idly tracks the open collar and the lines of his throat, the way his fingers skate over the polished countertop. “And this is, what? Hell casual?” He copies Jensen’s gesture at the black jacket and pants that forms the polar opposite of Jared’s ethereal attire, save for the white shirt. Some things they still have in common.  
  
“S’just something I threw together,” he says. Then adds, “Literally,” with a smirk and a flick of his fingers.  
  
Jared huffs a laugh. “Well you always did enjoy showing off. I remember the twenties.”  
  
“Which twenties?”  
  
“Oh, y’know.” He makes a motion around his head. “The one with all the hats.”  
  
“It was a phase,” Jensen shrugs. “Humans and their costumes, what can you do? Not like the bearskins weren’t as bad in their own special way.”  
  
Jared hums, sips his own drink which from the smell, has more honey than Jensen thinks you could dissolve into that amount of liquid through natural means. When he looks at Jensen again his eyes are ringed with gold and way too knowing, and Jensen has to fight the urge to make the espresso machine explode as a distraction.  
  
“So what now?” Jared asks. “Take that guitar of yours and, what’s the phrase, ‘go pro’? Not a lot of point in temptations or divine inspirations any more. We’ve been made redundant. Everyone’ll be avoiding eye contact until the embarrassment wears off.”  
  
Jensen reheats his drink with a wave of a finger. Coffee is never as good if there’s no risk of first-degree burns, in his view. He tries to work out whatever meaning Jared’s getting at, but he’s never cracked the balance between outright angelic honesty and whatever six thousand years of human interaction have taught him.  
  
“Not sure,” he settles on. “Maybe something corporate. Legal. Plenty of places in this century where Hell skills can be useful. Old habits die even harder when they’re this old, but I’m guessing their version of Human Resources isn’t like it is Below.”  
  
Jared chuckles, shakes his head. “I suppose I’ll go back to the bakery,” he says, considering. “I could expand; keep it open for longer now that I won’t be all over the place, keeping things counterbalanced against you, or worrying about attracting attention.”  
  
“You should,” Jensen agrees, aiming for a neutral that’s even harder to find when you’re a demon, eyes the guy in the accountant’s getup near the register, who’s been thinking about embezzling from his company in between weighing up the pros and cons of either a danish or a bear claw.  
  
“Don’t even think about it,” Jared mutters, suddenly serious. “We’re staying out of it now, and that’s final.” He looks, in that moment, every bit the soldier he’d been standing watch over the Garden. Jensen can’t say he likes the look.  
  
“Fine,” he says, easy and with a smile that could’ve gotten Presidents elected. And, in a moment of moderate boredom in the 1800s, started a social movement to turn cemeteries into public parks. He’s still chuckling about that one. “Just don’t expect me to start saving orphans or volunteering in soup kitchens. I’ve got no want to be Hell’s most approachable demon _after_ the bastards let me go.”  
  
“You’ve never been much of an approachable anything,” Jared says, back to affable bluntness.  
  
“Thanks,” Jensen tells him honestly. “You learn pretty quick Below that vague hostility and obscurity’s safer, especially when you’re stationed topside. The last guy I knew who got headhunted for bigger and bloodier things? Was actually headhunted. All these imps with tiny pikes, man. Not fun. Imps have no imagination.”  
  
“Did he at least get the job?”  
  
“Yeah but he told me the dental plan sucks. And they didn‘t even stick his head on the pike the right way up.”  
  
Jared shakes his head again, forever disappointed in how ‘base’ he finds the ways of Hell. He’s right, but Jensen is kind of obligated to uphold the standard, even now. And besides, they got all the good musicians.  
  
“You heard from anyone on your side?” he asks, not totally sure he wants to know.  
  
“Briefly,” Jared says, sipping at his tea. “I came into work this morning and found the Metatron helping himself to a batch of shortbread.”  
  
Jensen snorts, shakes his head. “I take it he didn’t apologise.” It’s not a question. Not even close.  
  
Jared’s mouth pinches. “Not in so many words, no. It was pretty stilted. He did say they’re putting in some kind of safeguards for passage between the Earth and the other planes. And that Duma’s got the whole situation under control.”  
  
“Oh I’m sure he does,” Jensen says. “Nothing says stern leadership like an angel with no voice.”  
  
“Exactly,” Jared agrees, missing the sarcasm entirely.  
  
Really though, it’s probably what the whole multilevel arrangement of realms and planes needs: less politics, and more cowbell.  
  
Jensen shakes his head, takes a considerable sip of burning caffeine. “D’you suppose He knew about any of it?” he asks reluctantly, pointing a finger up at the ceiling and grimacing.  
  
Jared’s brow creases a little. “We have to assume He knew about all of it,” he says. “That there was a point to the whole thing.”  
  
“Ol’ Remiel’s employee performance review?”  
  
“A test maybe,” Jared says, ignoring Jensen’s cynicism through long practice. “For both sides this time. Or maybe even for us, making sure we were the right ones in the right place for whatever comes next.” He makes an expansive gesture with his mug, some microcosmic thing Jensen thinks would give him a headache if he could get headaches.  
  
“Seems a pretty messy way to give us our retirement,” Jensen gripes. “So, that bakery of yours,” he says, pushing onward as he drains his coffee and entertains thoughts of materialising a refill, even if he never got the hang of wishing up edible things the way Jared can. “I’m guessing your accounts suck, right?”  
  
“They don’t _suck_ ,” Jared says, with an emphasis like he’s not sure how the word applies. “They’re just a little… dispersed.”  
  
Jensen snorts, and refills his mug with Johnnie Walker just to have something to do. “Yeah okay,” he says, waving off the angel’s defensiveness. “But see the thing is, I sold my apartment yesterday.”  
  
Jared sits up a little straighter, frowning. “Really? Why?”  
  
“Because I run a mildly successful urban renovation scheme,” he scoffs. “Why d’you think, featherbrains?”  
  
Jared’s expression morphs slowly from confusion, to surprised confusion, to awkwardly pleased with just a soupcon of confusion. It’s a lot more fun to watch than Jensen remembers.  
  
“Oh,” Jared says eventually, fiddling with his left cuff. “Jensen we haven’t tried cohabiting since -”  
  
“Since Paris in the 1840s, I know, and that whole thing wasn’t our fault.”  
  
Jared’s eyebrows climb his forehead. “I think it was at least partly-”  
  
“So we don’t let that happen this time,” Jensen says, clipping Jared on the shoulder with the back of his hand. “We’ve got a fresh start, might as well see what we can do with it. Besides,” he says, leaning in just to watch Jared’s eyes go a little wide, “I’ll probably need someone to keep me out of trouble.”  
  
Jared mutters something that sounds suspiciously like “Not enough cherubim in all the Choirs of the Host” that Jensen chooses to ignore, and keeps scrutinising Jensen’s face like he’s looking at whatever he has in place of a soul.  
  
“What about that… animal of yours?” Jared asks, wary, and Jensen can’t stop the - slightly ironic - bark of laughter.  
  
“Cat? Cat’s moved on; terrorising a pack of feral dogs as I was leaving. Below’ll probably recruit him before too long to train the Hellhounds. She’s going places.”  
  
“Jensen,” Jared sighs.  
  
“Alright, look,” Jensen starts, more seriously, and trying for an earnestness he doesn’t know if he has or even _wants_ in him. “I know we don’t see eye to eye, but still we like each other, right? Even though we’re from different sides? _Were_ from different sides, whatever.”  
  
Jared sighs again, “I’ve never disliked you, Jensen. But you’ve never really been comfortable staying anywhere.”  
  
“I’ve never really tried, remember? We’re free agents now. It’s worth a shot.” All the sincerity is giving him a headache, and someone near the door has been thinking about a timeshare so crooked it’s begging for his attention, but Jared’s still giving him that Look, and if Jensen doesn’t want this to go down the pan he needs to put the effort in.  
  
“C’mon angel,” he says, and smiles like a snake. “Live in sin with me.”  
  
Jared’s sigh this time could’ve parted a sea or toppled a mountain, but his eyes are gold and his lips are curving up at the corners, and Jensen’s seen that expression enough times to know when he’s on safe ground.  
  
“I’m guessing you don’t have much to move in,” Jared comes out with, and Jensen’s smile is nothing short of beatific. He pulls the key to the Cadillac out of his pocket, sets it on the counter with a metallic tap.  
  
“All packed,” he says. There’re a few things _in_ the car, of course. More than you should be able to fit into a ‘58 Cadillac of any size, but it’s Jensen’s car, and so it does what it’s told because it knows what’s good for it.  
  
He figures he’ll spring some of the more interesting things on Jared slowly. Maybe not that slowly, given that he’s now got all kinds of mutually beneficial methods of providing distraction.  
  
Jared picks up and turns it over in his hands, glint of metal between long, tan fingers. “Minimalist,” he accuses, too fond to be a barb, even if barbs were something Jared could really manage without a lot of trial and error.  
  
“Packrat,” Jensen replies instantly, and Jared’s smile makes the poor unsuspecting woman behind the register stumble and drop a small collection of mugs that shatter and scatter like glittering arterial spray across the floor.  
  
Jensen coughs a laugh into his hand. This is going to be fun, he can tell.  
  
 ** _END_**

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Florence and the Machine.


End file.
